BREAKING: an encouraging admission of lower climate sensitivity by a ‘hockey team’ scientist, along with new problems for the IPCC

UPDATE: Annan now suggests the IPCC “is in a bit of a pickle”, see below.

UPDATE2: Title has been changed to reflect Annan’s new essay, suggesting lying for political purposes inside the IPCC. Also added some updates about Aldrin et al and other notes for accuracy. See below.

Readers may recall there has been a bit of a hullabaloo at Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth of the New York Times over the press release I first carried at WUWT, saying that I had “seized on it”.

Surprisingly, although the press release was not about a new peer reviewed paper (Update: it appears to be a rehash and translation of a release about Aldrin et al from October), it has caused at least one scientist to consider it. Last night I was cc’d an exceptional email from Andrew Revkin forwarding an email (Update: Andy says of a comment from Dot Earth) quoting climate scientist James Annan, who one could call a member of the “hockey team” based on his strong past opinions related to AGW and paleoclimatology.

Andrew Revkin published the email today at the NYT Dot Earth blog as a comment in that thread, so now I am free to reproduce it here where I was not last night.

Below is the comment left by Andy, quoting Annan’s email, bolding added:

The climate scientist James Annan sent these thoughts by email:

‘Well, the press release is a bit strange, because it sounds like it is talking about the Aldrin et al paper which was published some time ago, to no great fanfare. I don’t know if they have a further update to that.

Anyway, there have now been several recent papers showing much the same – numerous factors including: the increase in positive forcing (CO2 and the recent work on black carbon), decrease in estimated negative forcing (aerosols), combined with the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade, all makes a high climate sensitivity increasingly untenable. A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything above 4.5.’

And this is what many have been saying now and for some time, that the climate sensitivity has been overestimated. Kudos to Annan for realizing the likelihood of a lower climate sensitivity.

The leader of the “hockey team”, Dr. Michael Mann will likely pan it, but that’s “Mikey, he hates everything”. I do wonder though, if he’ll start calling James Annan a “denier” as he has done in other instances where some scientist suggests a lower climate sensitivity?

But the point stands, that the IPCC’s sensitivity estimate cannot readily be reconciled with forcing estimates and observational data. All the recent literature that approaches the question from this angle comes up with similar answers, including the papers I mentioned above. By failing to meet this problem head-on, the IPCC authors now find themselves in a bit of a pickle. I expect them to brazen it out, on the grounds that they are the experts and are quite capable of squaring the circle before breakfast if need be. But in doing so, they risk being seen as not so much summarising scientific progress, but obstructing it.

Readers may recall this now famous graph from the IPCC leak, animated and annotated by Dr. Ira Glickstein in this essay here:

Yes, the IPCC is “in a bit of a pickle” to say the least, since as Annan said in his comment/email to Revkin:

…combined with the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade, all makes a high climate sensitivity increasingly untenable.

UPDATE 2: Annan also speaks about lying as a political motivator within the IPCC, I’ve repeated this extraordinary paragraph in full. Bold mine.

Note for the avoidance of any doubt I am not quoting directly from the unquotable IPCC draft, but only repeating my own comment on it. However, those who have read the second draft of Chapter 12 will realise why I previously said I thought the report was improved :-) Of course there is no guarantee as to what will remain in the final report, which for all the talk of extensive reviews, is not even seen by the proletariat, let alone opened to their comments, prior to its final publication. The paper I refer to as a “small private opinion poll” is of course the Zickfeld et al PNAS paper. The list of pollees in the Zickfeld paper are largely the self-same people responsible for the largely bogus analyses that I’ve criticised over recent years, and which even if they were valid then, are certainly outdated now. Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action. Of course, there may be others who lie in the other direction, which is why it seems bizarre that the IPCC appeared to rely so heavily on this paper to justify their choice, rather than relying on published quantitative analyses of observational data. Since the IPCC can no longer defend their old analyses in any meaningful manner, it seems they have to resort to an unsupported “this is what we think, because we asked our pals”. It’s essentially the Lindzen strategy in reverse: having firmly wedded themselves to their politically convenient long tail of high values, their response to new evidence is little more than sticking their fingers in their ears and singing “la la la I can’t hear you”.

451 thoughts on “BREAKING: an encouraging admission of lower climate sensitivity by a ‘hockey team’ scientist, along with new problems for the IPCC”

10 bucks sez Annan catches ton of flack from peers a la “WATTS IS QUOTING YOU!” “YOU JUST GAVE THE DENIERS A GIFT SOUND BYTE!!!” and Annan subsequently issues public statement angrily clarifying “seriousness” of the issue and that global action still immediately required

Annan doesn’t seem to be suggesting that CS is < 2, but rather that it isn't above 4.5. I'd bet he still thinks it hovers around 3.

I'm more interested in this bit:

"Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action. Of course, there may be others who lie in the other direction, which is why it seems bizarre that the IPCC appeared to rely so heavily on this paper to justify their choice, rather than relying on published quantitative analyses of observational data."

‘Anyway, there have now been several recent papers showing much the same – numerous factors including: the increase in positive forcing (CO2 and the recent work on black carbon), decrease in estimated negative forcing (aerosols), combined with the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade, all makes a high climate sensitivity increasingly untenable. A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything above 4.5.’

“….combined with the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade,….”

What is instructive to observe, ever more often recently, is the dissapointed tone with which the AGW faction respond to every bit of good news about the climate. They really do not give a fig for the climate. They just use it as a device for their other ends.

Your mention of Mann reminded me that these climate “scientists” are working most closely with research universities like PSU and Boulder that are simultaneously taking the lead on using their colleges of education and psych and sociology departments to change the focus of K-12 more to social and emotional learning and behavioral interventions that apply to all students.

Given the expressed goal to change beliefs to accept the models via schools no matter what the temperature trends, it’s hardly coincidental that PennState is pushing Patterning Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) for All Students while Boulder is pushing Positive Behavioral Intervention Systems for All Students.

Both Boulder and Penn State are determined to change the students since they cannot control the weather or the climate. Not that they recognize the difference much anymore.

We have a serious problem in that nearly an entire field of science depends on this issue for its revenue. How many people were in the field of “climate science” in 1965 vs. 2005? Now compare that to the number of people in other areas such as geology. This issue has created a huge amount of money and the issue itself is what has driven many to enter this field of science over the past 20 years. If this issue “goes away”, so does the foundation for their chosen career. So this is a very personal and very emotional issue to many.

There are also a lot of influential scientists, politicians, and various other personalities who have put their personal credibility on the line by making statements on the absolute certainty of this issue. It is going to be very difficult for them to admit they were wrong as people in high profile public positions tend to be more narcissistic than the general population. They believe they are smarter, they believe they are better informed, and they believe their own judgement to be better than that of the average person. For them to say that those whom they called “Neanderthals” were actually correct is going to be nearly impossible for them to pull off. The best we can hope for is something along the lines of “I made the best call I could with the information we had at the time” or something.

But it is even bigger than all of that. This issue causes a great synergy where a political group uses the issue to get buy-in for spending billions of dollars for their political objectives. Environmental groups use the issue to get buy in to spend billions of dollars for their objectives. People champion the issue and themselves are launched to celebrity status. And finally we have the people whose careers were built on the issue and maybe those careers would be at stake if it turns out the world needs fewer “climate scientists”. So we are going to have a great circling of the wagons with the celebrities and the politicians and the “scientists” all working together to keep the issue that any changes in climate are due to human actions by people in industrialized countries. Where would Andy Revkin be today without this issue? Even his career and credibility rest on this issue. Of course he is going to keep this issue alive. There is too much water now under the bridge to go trying to pump it all back.

The first indication that any argument is without merit is the appeal to consensus. We are supposed to believe something is true simply because a majority of influential people believe it is true. When the proponents of ANYTHING trot that logical fallacy out as their primary defense, then you know it is likely false and they have little else on which to stand other than speculation.

John Russell says:
February 1, 2013 at 11:14 am
Well, I think any discussion on here about ECS even approaching 2°C is a major step forward. Is lukewarmism the new normal? Actually that’s major progress.

The problem seems to me to be that they take temperatures from 1980 to 2000, compare that to CO2 increase and come up with a climate sensitivity number. Then when they add 2000-2010 to their equations, the climate become less “sensitive”. They they have always had the means to do this. They could have gone back to 1910 to 2000 compared temperature change to CO2 increase and would have found less climate sensitivity. They intentionally picked a portion of the temperature record where the slope of the curve was close to the slope of CO2 increase and decided that there was a cause / effect relationship. They could have noticed that the change in temperature from 1910 to 1940 (using unadjusted data) was nearly identical to the the change in temperature from 1975 to 2005 and the curve of CO2 change was quite different during the two periods. Now they are being forced to reckon with the lack of recent change while they are going back into the databases and altering them to remove the previous rise. I have little doubt that 20 years from now we will see in the databases that warming never stopped after 2000. The hiatus in warming will simply be adjusted away as if it never happened. I would say these people are charlatans but that would be kind. They are stealing from our children and grandchildren and putting the money in their own pockets.

0.1 degree here, 0.1 degree there…..for us Norwegians the only consequence will be that they change the name of some tax. Yesterday there was a tax per horsepower on your car, then they changed the name to CO2 tax. What it will be tomorrow? NOx-tax? Window tax? Beard-tax?

JC, if not fraud, it certainly indicates that those surveys of opinion shuld have little or no role in a science conversation. For years I have shut down anyone who drags out that silly, “but, 99% of scientists agree …”, crap.

“JC, if not fraud, it certainly indicates that those surveys of opinion shuld (sic) have little or no role in a science conversation. For years I have shut down anyone who drags out that silly, ‘but, 99% of scientists agree …’, crap.”

I am ready for The Nuremberg Trials: Climate Change Edition.
Anyone who knowingly perpetrated lies to world governments is highly culpable.
Anyone who did so also willfully (as opposed to under orders or by association, e.g. ‘consensus’) demands a heavier sentence still.

I fear far too many involved will slowly “come out” with reserved back-walking statements such as this to cover their butts when consequences will finally fall.

Steve Mosher, you need to go to the next step. Now that you’ve characterized Annan as a “Luke”, do you feel we should mitigate for CO2 emissions or promote it as a boon to the undeveloped countries. Which way do you lean, Sir.

It’s all coming out. I’m sure the team won’t like to hear in the public arena that there has been more cheating and exaggeration admitted to. Oh my, where will it end?

As for those relying on the distaster meme for their jobs and their money – this ship has been sinking for a while now. They’ve known it’s been rotten and they’ve had years to get out safely – people do change careers – but they chose to stay. Choice is still there, but time is running out. They need to think about getting out now or going down with the ship. I don’t care which. The point is they have a choice, it might not be a choice that they like, but it is a choice. Lets see how “wise” they are. Quite a few who don’t jump will be left carrying the can, because the big boys will be over the hills and far away. Who’s going to do jail-time? That’s what they should be asking themselves.

The quote: “Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action.”

Slowly…very slowly…folks in the warmest camp are gradually coming in line with everything that the skeptics have been saying for over a decade, not only about the science, but about the politicization of the science.

“Of course there is no guarantee as to what will remain in the final report, which for all the talk of extensive reviews, is not even seen by the proletariat , let alone opened to their comments, prior to its final publication.”

Definition of PROLETARIAT

1: the laboring class; especially : the class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labor to live

Many years ago my high school math teacher set us to “squaring the circle” and “trisecting an angle” – two of the three classical problems. Thus, when James Annan writes . . .
“they are the experts and are quite capable of squaring the circle before breakfast if need be”
. . . I doff my hat in this man’s direction.

wikeroy says: 0.1 degree here, 0.1 degree there…..for us Norwegians the only consequence will be that they change the name of some tax. Yesterday there was a tax per horsepower on your car, then they changed the name to CO2 tax. What it will be tomorrow? NOx-tax? Window tax? Beard-tax?

I was rather shocked to find that a trip on the Flytoget from Oslo Sentralstasjon to Gardermoen cost me nearly US $40, even though I was being environmentally conscious by taking the train rather than driving. God only knows how much of that was taxes.

back in 2007 or 2008 we did a poll on Climate audit asking the question
How much of the warming we see today is due to GHG.
There was a distinct group of us that said ‘some, but not all ” heck even Willis said 30%

We called ourselves Lukewarmers.

Over the years a few of us have worked to define what we mean by Lukewarmer and what defines the position.

1. Acceptance of radiative physics.
2. Acceptance of a lower bound to sensitivity. basically the no feedback estimate is 1.2C per
doubling. We think that the true sensitivity will be above 1.
3. over/under line. The over under line is 3C. That is, if offered a bet that the climate sensitivity
is either ‘between 1 and 3 or over 3, we take the under bet.

ballpark:
less than 1.2 5%
1.2 to 3. 50%
3 to 4.5 45%
4.5+ 5%

So if you believe that GHG can warm the planet and not cool it, and you think that the mean estimate of the IPCC of 3.2 is more likely high than low, then you are a lukewarmer. But you have to drop the crazy refusals over radiative physics.

Note: lukewarmers dont have to attack the surface record, its probably correct to within .2C
we also dont have to slam models, or invent kook theories about the sun. everything we
believe is well within the consensus and we think that you can change the consensus from
inside the tent rather than attacking everything and everyone. Focus on sensitivity, work
to refine that. You see there is a debate in climate science, its a debate about sensitivity.
When folks start putting their effort into that ( instead of frittering away time on tangents)
then you will see changes.

Philip Finck says:
February 1, 2013 at 10:56 am
“James Annan is to be commended. He has looked at more recent peer reviewed literature, assessed it on its merit, and offered a revised personal opinion on the climate sensitivity issue.”

Maybe just a quibble, but if he assessed it on its merits then he offered more than a personal opinion. He offered the best that his science has to offer.

Of course, there may be others who lie in the other direction, which is why it seems bizarre that the IPCC appeared to rely so heavily on this paper to justify their choice, rather than relying on published quantitative analyses of observational data.

“published quantitative analyses of observational data”?

It seems appropriate to again draw attention to these determinations based on “quantitative analyses of observational data”.

If climate sensitivity is less than 1.0 deg.C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration and, therefore, any effect on global temperature of increase to atmospheric CO2 concentration only has an abstract existence; it does not have a discernible existence that has observable effects because climate variability is much larger.

“Terje Berntsen emphasises that his project’s findings must not be construed as an excuse for complacency in addressing human-induced global warming. The results do indicate, however, that it may be more within our reach to achieve global climate targets than previously thought.”

Not sure how you read this, but I read it as: Now that it’s “within our reach”, let’s go “all in”

Annan: “A value (slightly) below two is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible…”
Which is what his most recent paper showed, although did not mention it at all. Annan et. al. Climate Change 104: 423-436 (2011). I pointed this out in 2012 in The Arts of Truth. Nice to see him now acknowledging the main message of his own recent work.
Perhaps the fact that the IPCC is ignoring his paper and his comments brought him the the realization that “pal poling” and pal review eventually get it so wrong one has to make difficult choices about remaining a member in good standing of the clique. He made the right choice to come down on the side of observational evidence and his own unspoken conclusions.

Then we Compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, to see if this guess was right, we see what it would imply.

And then we Compare the computation results to Nature – or we say compare to experiment or experience – compare it directly with observations to see if it works.

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.

In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment: It’s wrong.

That’s all there is to it.

When the computations based on the Guess do not match up with reality/Nature/experiment/experience, what is the scientific conclusion?. . .

This last decade has been one of increasing schadenfruede for us lonely misguided skeptics, who have been waiting for the other shoe to drop – them admitting their Guess (CAGW) is wrong. It is amazing some of us haven’t peed in our pants from the anticipation. It has been a long, slow, almost agonizing watch, as computations based on The Guess have increasingly diverged from what the Guess predicted. Yes, the OTHER divergence problem, and this one “Mike’s Nature trick” couldn’t hide. As in all divergences from predictions (computations), divergence equals WRONG.

It is beginning to be altogether obvious that the global increase in the 1990s was a coincidence – one that brought temporary glee (and much grant moneys and influence) to the Guessers of the 1980s – but nothing more. After the tipping point of Climategate people have been slowly abandoning the Good Ship Lollipop, and we are still in the middle of climate science going back to being the scientific backwater it always had been. Now it appears that even the crew is beginning to don life jackets.

The other shoe hasn’t dropped yet, but is that the Fat Lady I hear warming up? When does Elvis Mann leave the building, that is what I want to know. Will it be when he loses the lawsuit and we get to see what he is hiding (besides the decline)?

“Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action.”

Are we looking at a crack in the dam? Leaky statement that could implicate a few Hockey Stick players with knowingly committing government fraud, crimes against humanity? Resulting in them turning State’s evidence with plea bargains, leading to even more of GW Alarmists going down.

“There are also a lot of influential scientists, politicians, and various other personalities who have put their personal credibility on the line by making statements on the absolute certainty of this issue. ”

My own personal focus in regards such “personalities” is the tiresome, privileged “comedian” Marcus Brigstocke. And his colleague Rob Newman. These two non-scientist Home Counties liberal arts graduates have made money selling AGW and thrusting it down the throat of the public at every opportunity. BTW, mentioning Brigstock alongside Newman isnt meant as a credit to the former. Its a deliberate insult to the latter.

Anthony, please do *Not* feel apologetic or defensive for “seizing” upon the truth. The truth will prevail.
If it makes them feel apoplectic so much the better.
Keep up the great work. you and your moderators are doing a masterful job.

crosspatch–it’s worse than just who is in climate science now. It has become a degree program where the social sciences dominate the hard sciences and the desire is to create a single unified science. Of course that also requires taking the free choice out of human behavior. Which is why education, both K-12 and higher ed, is so important. What little content there is apaprt from social interaction is mostly about fostering false beliefs. And with the NSF also pushing cyberlearning there will be no text books to monitor what is being pushed. I have just seen the grants and the new science frameworks and it’s all Constructivism. That means all hard science is to be experiential not a body of knowledge.

The nAS docs I have seen have the profs and administrators seeking out the “most talented” students to urge them to go into climate science. With nice fellowships starting as undergrads. The whole idea in K-12 has always been to use out of scale salaries to corrupt. Willing to push anything the money is there. If you are selling what you know or can do, no bonus scales for you.

Positive forcings is counterintuitive. If that was the case, Earth’s history would have been an unlivable mess of giant climate fluctuations. Much more likely is negative forcing if any forcing at all.

But don’t expect him to come back and explain. However, “lukewarmers” seem to believe that climate change is happening and humans are responsible and, therefore, some things can be done now, including significant restraints on CO2 release. Some think “adaptive” strategies will be sufficient without drastically reducing use of energy. For example, stop building houses on beaches. Skeptics do not believe there is a looming catastrophe. Follow up on this and many believe the world has serious problems – providing clean drinking water and low cost energy to folks, among others – and that such problems ought to be addressed directly, not by severe damage to the current means of accomplishing these things. Then there are the ‘catastrophists’ – not relevant here.
Mr. Mosher has just said (after the quote) that the person is not a skeptic of catastrophic anthropological global warming but more in the ‘lukewarm’ camp.

Recognize that it is always dangerous to impute meaning to comments where meaning is not clear. By doing so we might get a clarification. Or maybe not!

I would agree with most of what you say about lukewarming as a concept, but it slightly surprises me that you see the no-feedback sensitivity as a natural lower bound. As far as I can see, accepting radiative physics only requires one to believe that the climate sensitivity is strictly positive (i.e., greater than zero). One might of course have additional grounds for placing the lower limit somewhat higher up, but these would come from more complex considerations, not from fairly elementary physics.

As others have said, most interesting quotes from Annan. My favorite: I expect them to brazen it out, on the grounds that they are the experts and are quite capable of squaring the circle before breakfast if need be. But in doing so, they risk being seen as not so much summarising scientific progress, but obstructing it.

The 2005 IPCC report pegged the total anthropogenic component at somewhere between 0.5 and 2.5 Watts per square meter, if memory serves me correctly. That’s a retardedly wide range and tells us rather little when combined with the atrociously modeled underlying natural factors.

My assumption is that the role of nature will continue to come to the forefront as the debate progresses, especially the magnitude of natural carbon sinks having been massively underestimated.

Steven Mosher: But you have to drop the crazy refusals over radiative physics.

Which comments are “crazy refusals over radiative physics”? Plenty of people write about non-radiative heat transfer processes, and the non-equilibrium, non-steady state, non-stationarity of the overall system than make inferences from simple radiative models suspect. Don’t even lukewarmers have to drop the (crazy ?) refusals to acknowledge these limitations of the science?

“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”

I visited Annan’s website about two or three years ago. It didn’t seem fanatical.

He’s in Japan. He’s made some publicized climate bets and lamented the lack of a mechanism whereby bets between the two sides of this issue could be facilitated. There was a long thread on the topic at RC (I think), which I printed out.

…
When folks start putting their effort into that ( instead of frittering away time on tangents)then you will see changes. (my bold)

Ok, Mr. Mosher, but are you absolutely sure that all of the additional CO2 is from humans and not some natural response to a warming earth?

Are you sure you’ve got it right?

Are you so sure that you’re willing to seriously curtail CO2 emissions from humans? Are these the “changes” you think we’ll see?

Are you willing to say that CO2 offers no discernible (and offsetting) benefits to the biosphere?

You call people “Lukewarmers” when you haven’t defined the most critical aspect, and that is one of liability. Thorough research would convince everybody of the benefits of CO2, but it is extremely difficult to see a negative impact of a warming earth, regardless of the cause.

So please, provide scientific evidence that humans are causing destructive warming (where they didn’t cause the LIA in the first place) and show where such warming is harmful rather than beneficial.

(OF course, I’ve asked you to provide answers to a number of questions in the past and I’m not holding my breath waiting for a response this time, for you never do respond with anything substantive. You’d benefit greatly from the presentation Bob Tisdale posted earlier today. It clearly shows there’s no discernible warming due to CO2. Sorry to break it to ya, but the challenge remains.)

The quote: “Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action.”

The question: Are there minutes of that meeting?

Somehow I really doubt it – ” If only Holland knew how the process really worked!!”

Annan doesn’t seem to be suggesting that CS is < 2, but rather that it isn't above 4.5. I'd bet he still thinks it hovers around 3.

Actually, what he says (if you read it) is that the data is suggesting that it is less than 2. It’s not completely unreasonable for people to have a bit of inertia in their former opinions (and to cover their asses, and to hedge their bets) and not jump all the way from prior belief to exactly what the data says (Bayesian thinking supports this). But there is no doubt that the higher values are now very unlikely, as I and many others have been saying for some years now in this forum. Regardless of your prior beliefs, not to alter them given contradictory data (in some smooth way) is to abandon reason.

From what I’ve heard, AR5 was going to drop its central estimates of sensitivity to just under 3 — 2.7 or 2.8. However, I think that there is enough pressure and data that it might go down by more to the 2 to 2.5 range. I don’t expect that they will go all the way to sub-2 in one jump, but the fact that it is going down at all is a sign that there are, in fact, plenty of honest scientists involved in the process (as well as some openly dishonest ones).

The evidence itself (IMO, for what that is worth) supports a central estimate of 1.2 to 1.4 C by the end of the century, 0.2 to 0.3 of which has already happened. But the error bars are still large enough that they include anything from 1-2 C lower temperatures to 3 C warmer. We simply don’t know enough to do any better.

Excellent choice of quotation from Feynman. Notice that laws imply observations. Very few in climate science recognize that a successful climate science must imply the climate phenomena that they explain.

February 1st and rats are lining up.
2013 is very entertaining so far, I expect some major rat outs this year, Al Gore has rubbed the faithfuls face in it, David Suzuki has interesting demands for female students and the Obama has glommed onto Global Warming with perfect timing.
The EPA is attracting serious scrutiny at last and the overt power grab thro regulation is going to hit more of the faithful in the wallet.
As the gaps become undisguisable, the team will be racing to rat their comrades out.

“Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action.”

Michael Jankowski has already quoted Steven Schneider at February 1, 2013 at 2:32 pm .
I’ve always seen Schneider as the organizing force behind the CO2AGW consensus / IPCC push for global transormationo / exploitation of taxpayers. I guess during his lifetime the most dangerous place on Earth was between him and a TV camera.

Compared to Schneider, Hansen and Mann are just water carriers. And without Schneider, they can’t coordinate well enough anymore to get their bogus story straight, and defections like Annan happen. Or the defection of Lovelock himself, having earned enough money, he chooses to be honest instead of efficient now.

Steven Mosher says:
February 1, 2013 at 1:09 pm
“So if you believe that GHG can warm the planet and not cool it, and you think that the mean estimate of the IPCC of 3.2 is more likely high than low, then you are a lukewarmer. But you have to drop the crazy refusals over radiative physics. ”

GHG’s absorb and re-emit IR photons; basically scattering it. As radiative exchange is a quick process, many such exchanges happen in minutes. It doesn’t matter much whether a photon from the Earth’s surface goes to space instantly or is scattered a few times.

The absorption bands of CO2 at 4.3 micrometer corresponds to a color temperature of 600 K. The band at 15 micrometer to a color temperature of 200 K.

Most objects on Earth including mammals radiate predominantly around 300 K – where CO2 absorbs absolutely nothing. Only water vapor aborbs and re-emits in that band; and the postulated positive water vapor feedback remains elusive in reality like the Loch Ness monster.

Ok, …..back in 2007 or 2008 we did a poll on Climate audit asking the question
How much of the warming we see today is due to GHG.There was a distinct group of us that said ‘some, but not all ” heck even Willis said 30%……We called ourselves Lukewarmers.

Over the years a few of us have worked to define what we mean by Lukewarmer and what defines the position.

1. Acceptance of radiative physics.
2. Acceptance of a lower bound to sensitivity. basically the no feedback estimate is 1.2C per
doubling. We think that the true sensitivity will be above 1.

So if you believe that GHG can warm the planet and not cool it, and you think that the mean estimate of the IPCC of 3.2 is more likely high than low, then you are a lukewarmer. But you have to drop the crazy refusals over radiative physics.

Note: lukewarmers dont have to attack the surface record, its probably correct to within .2C
we also don’t have to slam models, …….”

Having said all that, Steven, you still must recognise that even in this you were ‘taking a punt’.

ie while the facts of radiative physics will change for no man or his beliefs, those who chose to focus fully on the “radiative physics effects” of CO2 while knowing little about the effects of aerosols, clouds and water vapour were simply displaying a similar sort of “closed mind devoutness” ….

The METHODS of use of the models SHOULD be criticized…. making extreme projections by tweaking variables and ignoring unknown feedback effects with models as sensitive and complex as this, then publishing hugely detailed and complex papers in the peer reviewed literature knowing that few one can counter such esoteric complexity …

Many who respond in here have a “more correct” view than does Steven Mosher… among the notables are Willis, with his intriguing looks at a ‘self regulating ‘ world, and rgbatduke, with his clear essays on how little data we have collected to date.

> Mosher :
> lukewarmers dont have to attack the surface record,
> its probably correct to within .2C

I disagree with the claimed accuracy of the surface record.
The network of temperature stations is being treated as if
it were a survey, whereas in fact it is a dog’s breakfast, and
being asked to fulfill a role for which it was never intended.

Claims for accuracy are much like the claims by pollsters and
those undertaking consumer surveys, where a sample of 1,000
is usually described as being accurate to with +- 3.4% at the 50%
level of incidence, and at the 95% confidence level. Such claims
are garbage, as they report a purely statistical error based on a
an ideal methodology. The ‘survey error’ (as distinct from the
‘statistical error’) may be 2-4 times higher, depending on how well
or badly the survey has been carried out.

I think most skeptics are “lukewarmers”, even if they don’t use the term about themself. I’ve never heard Anthony or Steve McI say anything that would exclude them from the lukewarmer camp, and much that would imply they are in that camp whether they use the term about themself or not.

Anthony, I note that you refused to publish Annan’s email until it was in the public domain, even though it is embarrassing to the alarmists. What a contrast with Gleick who not only published but invented documents for publication. You are, indeed, an honourable man in an age which could do with many more. Well done, mate!

Everyone quotes Feynman. I’m reminded of Huxley’s “The great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact”. Except in this case, the idea that the whole climate can be described by an undergraduate physics theory, and the abuses to which that idea has been put, is the ugliness. The fact that it’s being shown to be wrong is truly beautiful.

Can anyone point me to a graph of climate sensitivity estimates over time. For example, 2007 Smith and Jones min (95%) 1.2; most prob 1.9; max 2.8 (95%). I’ve got the Wiki article of estimates, but I don’t know if it’s been Connolley’d. And the IPCC is clearly not reliable, as Annan is saying. It’s just that if you chart them it might look nicely like a upside-down hockey stick!

The fundamentals of the “settled science” are just wrong.
Calculating the temeprature of one quarter of the solar radiation adjusted for albedo is basically meaningless other than correct geometry.
Neglecting day and night is stupid.
Denying that the Moon’s surface radiating unhindered to space cools at a far slower rate than the Earth’s surfaces subject to conductive/convective cooling is stupid.

Suggesting that the atmosphere insulates us from the “ocld” depths of outer space is insane when we are relatively close to a moderate star which continuously emits powerful radiation – the space at Earth’s orbit cannot be considered “cold” by any stretch of the imagination.

Climate science is wrong – my opinion but one I’ve have read up on and come to my reasoned conclusion.

I’m sure I’m going to regret asking, but what is it with the default hostility everybody seems to hold towards Steven Mosher? I never seem to catch him saying anything particularly outrageous and I’ve been quietly puzzled about this for quite some time now. I mean, is he a bad guy in everyone’s eyes because of BEST, is that what it is? I’ve heard him defend adjustments to temperature records, often stating that you could take the adjustments out and still get the same answer, is it about this? I get that he can be annoying as hell, is that what it’s about? I ask mostly because he impressed the heck out of me by deducing Gleick’s involvement in the Heartland business, after which I started paying attention to his posts, and I’ve failed to see since what it is about the guy that gets everybody so riled up.
Just asking, if it’s all the same to anyone who wants to clue me in, I’d just like to add that I’m asking honestly, no particular need in my eyes to hand me my own decapitated head in your answer.

I think most skeptics are “lukewarmers”, even if they don’t use the term about themself. I’ve never heard Anthony or Steve McI say anything that would exclude them from the lukewarmer camp, and much that would imply they are in that camp whether they use the term about themself or not.

####################

1. they would need to clarify a couple things.
A) position on radiative physics. Anthony has agreed somewhat, steve im less clear on.
B) clarify there position on the lower bound of sensitivity.

I dont think most skeptics are lukewarmers. I don’t think they have thought about the science in a way that allows them to agree with any aspect of it. Its mostly knee jerk contrarianism.
Its pretty easy. Just say : radiative physics is correct ( roy spenser and john christy and dick lindzen are correct, that science is sound ) and say.. Its possible that sensitvity to doubling is greater than 1. Most skeptics however are certain it is less than 1. they think their science is settled.

Climate sensitivity is often expressed in a distribution function (long-tailed) like this one.

But this long-tail distribution is not based on actual data. It is just garbage guestimates.

The actual CO2 sensitivity throughout history going back 545 million years looks like this. This is the real distribution.

What it shows is that there are two dominant factors – Earth’s Albedo and GHGs.

Earth’s Albedo can dominate over certain periods and the CO2 sensitivity appears to anything between +40.0C per doubling to -40.0C per doubling in these periods. In other words, irrelevant.

And there may be periods when not much Albedo change is occuring and 1.5C per CO2 doubling seems to be the dominant factor.

For the life of me, I can’t see how anyone can produce a long-tailed distribution when the actual data does not support this at all. Even the modern period of temps and CO2 support 1.5C or less let alone the paleoclimate throughout history. One would have to be just making up one’s facts as one goes along to come up with a long-tailed distribution. Well, there is your answer isn’t.

> Mosher :
> lukewarmers dont have to attack the surface record,
> its probably correct to within .2C

I disagree with the claimed accuracy of the surface record.
The network of temperature stations is being treated as if
it were a survey, whereas in fact it is a dog’s breakfast, and
being asked to fulfill a role for which it was never intended.

##################
Well, its pretty easy to test. I take a random sample of around 300 stations. I construct an estimate for the temperature at other locations. i used my sample of 500 to predict the other locations.
Guess what? damn, those estimates of out of sample cases are always bang on.
Wanna know something even better. So, you might think you’re right. I used to think that too. But, I pulled out my feynman, tested your idea and had to give your idea up.
go figure.

I think the sensitivity issue is starting to gain some traction even in the MSM.

However, they still don’t get the implications of it. i.e. If the sensitivity is much lower than the IPCC and other alarmists claim, the entire CO2 bugaboo evaporates. When will they start to connect the dots?

You have the process all wrong. The effect works by raising the ERL. Dont believe me, it was DOD research prior to AGW that settled that issue. Take it up with Christy or Spenser or Lindzen and explain to them why they are wrong about radiative physics. or write a paper an collect your nobel prize.

” Ok, Mr. Mosher, but are you absolutely sure that all of the additional CO2 is from humans and not some natural response to a warming earth?

Are you sure you’ve got it right?
######################
Since science only deals in the likely and unlikely there is no proof in science and hence no certainty. Adding GHGs to the atmosphere is more likely to warm the planet than cool it. there is no science suggesting otherwise. Regardless of the source of all the extra C02, the real question is

1. is it safe to continue our geoengineering project of adding more c02?
2. How safe?
3. how do you know?

I found a 1/10 C warming in just one bit of bad code in ONE subroutine of GIStemp. The notion that they ‘have it right’ to 0.2 C (while Airport Heat Island dominate, MMTS ‘wrong way’ correction was done, and UHI is often backwards) is a ludicrous idea.

@Geo:

I’m a skeptic and NOT a ‘lukewarmer’. Why is simple:

The whole radiative model depends on the notion that there is a radiative zone between the stratosphere and the troposphere. That the tropopause is a mass flow static zone and only radiation crosses it (thus all the discussion of ‘back radiation’ across it).

That is spectacularly wrong.

At the tropopause, vertical mass flow slows dramatically, but does not stop. The bulk of the mass flow turns sideways and heads toward the cold pole(s). At the poles (more at one in winter – whichever end is having winter then) a dramatic ‘downwelling’ of stratospheric air mass happens. That means that a load of air must be entering the stratosphere in the middle of the earth somewhere. Taking heat flow with it. (It happens at cell boundaries and via wind turbulence effects from transverse winds). BTW, that “pause” at the tropopause? It’s a Cat 2 hurricane force wind sideways. Think that’s doing to have some turbulent mixing with the air on each side? (Stratospheric / tropospheric).

Then there is “overshoot” where any thunderstorm worth the name punches through the “pause” and dumps a load directly to the stratospheric base.

Basically, the ‘radiative model’ just assumes away a whole lot of real and demonstrable mass flow.

See this image of wind speed vs altitude and note the giant speed spike at the ‘pause’…

At the core, “Radiative thinking” is an error of omission of that fact, coupled with ignoring long cycle events that can be shown to have happened in history and look to be directly driven by lunar tidal mixing of the cold ocean depths to the surface (or not, during warming times)

Once you figure in the longer cycles of lunar tidal mixing effects, and that the “radiative zone” isn’t radiative… well, there isn’t much left for CO2 to do other than radiate heat to space from the Stratosphere (which it does). Below the “pause” water is the dominant radiative gas, but it is convection that drives heat flow. AT the “pause” it’s a mix of some radiation (mostly upward from water) and some mass flow. Only above the “pause” is CO2 radiation interesting or significant. At that point it’s a net heat pump to space. See graph here:

So, IMHO, “lukewarmers” have already got the basic mechanism wrong so their belief in any given “physics” is irrelevant and the result they get will be wrong.

Steven Mosher: But you have to drop the crazy refusals over radiative physics.

Which comments are “crazy refusals over radiative physics”? Plenty of people write about non-radiative heat transfer processes, and the non-equilibrium, non-steady state, non-stationarity of the overall system than make inferences from simple radiative models suspect. Don’t even lukewarmers have to drop the (crazy ?) refusals to acknowledge these limitations of the science?
#################
1. You want examples read this thread. read the sky dragons.
2. The limitations of ‘the’ science?
Its pretty simple. We have radiative physics. that physics is used to build sensors, to build cell phones and radars and that physics has been tested in the field and well, its good enough to defend our country, so I suppose, you’ll have to point out where it doesnt work. We know from first principles, verified by testing, that doubling will get us to 1.2C. Now, you suggest that other less well known and less certain considerations might overturn what is A) tested physics and B) physics that us used to build working devices. I think the recognition of limitations rightly should be pressed upon those who promote the less well know rather than the more well known.

Mosh wrote: 1. they would need to clarify a couple things.
A) position on radiative physics. Anthony has agreed somewhat, steve im less clear on.
B) clarify there position on the lower bound of sensitivity.
++++

Well, he who says A says B, so long as he understood what he said when he said A. Personally, I don’t have any problem with 1.2C +/- a reasonable error bar. And thank you for adding Spenser, Christy, and Lindzen to the list of skeptic “lukewarmers”, self-labelling or not.

One of the sociological facts of science is that certainty is highest the farther someone is from the heart of the controversey. [Google the “Golem series of books by Harry Collins who mostly studied scientists working on gravitational waves.] Another sociological fact is that it’s possible to keep supporting ideas that have been pretty much proven wrong.

So I’d expect to see only a few more defections but at least some from deep insiders. The people on the outskirts are still arguing that the only thing that warmed during the Medieval Climate Anomaly was Greenland and western Europe. The fact that climate is a matter of globally correlated weather patterns (and so is extremely complicated to predict) hasn’t diffused out yet.

Steven Mosher says (February 1, 2013 at 5:05 pm)
Most skeptics however are certain it is less than 1. they think their science is settled.
——
Nope. I’d be happy with 1. That means climate sensitivity ~1.2C, doesn’t it? Any figure below 1.5C is perfectly acceptable to this sceptic.

Mosh, I still don’t get why you think the lower bound for climate sensitivity has to be the 1.2K “no-feedbacks” value. Accepting the logic of radiative physics does not speak to the question of whether net feedbacks will be negative or positive, the answer to which will have a meaningful impact on the lower bound, right?

Observations to date seem to point to net feedbacks being negative over many differing timescales. Just saying….

I am ready for The Nuremberg Trials: Climate Change Edition.
Anyone who knowingly perpetrated lies to world governments is highly culpable.
Anyone who did so also willfully (as opposed to under orders or by association, e.g. ‘consensus’) demands a heavier sentence still.

How about having to participate as a subject in an EPA fine particulate matter experiment?

Ahh, sensitivity. Sorry, Mosh is including the feedbacks there, so I get the distinction now. So in the Mosher definition of “lukewarmer” you’re allowed to posit some negative feedback, but a relatively modest amount (less than 17%).

Watch closely and you will see the occasional Barb Flinging at skeptics. ( I’ve taken a few, especially in a posting here on GHCN v1 vs v3 modifications where I was accused of things ranging from stupidity to lying – though in somewhat dressed up terms.)

Don’t get me wrong, I have no hate for Mosher. He genuinely believes his positions and is willing to test things. Just stuck in a paradigm he is unwilling to exit. (Radiative physics dominates). In person, he’s a nice guy. (Had dinner once). Generally a person I’d trust with my car keys.

Oh, and he isn’t willing to question things enough. I think it is FINE to question “established radiative physics”. Mostly I’ve yet to find anything wrong with it (despite a few odd bits). However, that questioning causes Mosher to toss rocks… It was just that questioning that finally lead me to the point that the tropo”pause” isn’t a pause and it isn’t a radiative process there. It was clear to me that “something was wrong with the radiative model” and I started part by part. In the end, found that the ‘wrong bit’ wasn’t IR photons so much as mass flow. Steven doesn’t ask the question as “that is settled’… I’m willing to wander through some “wrong speculation” to find what’s right.

@Mosher:

” Most skeptics however are certain it is less than 1. they think their science is settled.”

About as far as possible from reality. First off, you can’t know what “most” anyone think at all. Second, given the dozens of alternative POV questions, comments, articles, and speculations over the years, it’s pretty darned clear that there is NO “settled science” on the skeptic side.

Please stop “making stuff up”…

I am quite sure that the AGW radiative thesis is wrong, and I’ve looked at many possible ways things might really be working. While I think I’ve finally got the big bits worked out ( lunar tidal for about 1/2 to 3/4, long term cyclical, tropo’pause’ mixing) I’m also quite certain that it is not possible to disambiguate the “lunar tidal” from “solar / UV mediated” from “solar GCR mediated” nor ascribe how much is ‘other’ cyclicalities involving loopy vs straight ( meridional vs zonal) jet stream; as they all come together when they come.

Hardly “settled” and more a “project of ongoing discovery”.

However the last 16 years pretty much blow the radiative thesis… ( I’d held out some expectation for a little leftover for it, but that’s looking like a big zero now).

Per your three questions:

1) Yes. 200 – 300 ppm is near the lower bound for plant life. We’ve got issues this low.
2) Completely. At most it can help hold off the next glacial, starting “soon” in geological terms. At most it can put us smacking into the ‘hard lid’ of negative feedback at about 2 C higher than now evidenced in the last half dozen or more interglacials of this ice age. (Can you say “existence proof”?)
3) Prior geologic history. Plants evolved for about 1000 – 2000 ppm, and for most of geologic history earth has been well beyond that. Didn’t stop prior ice ages (prior to our present series of glacials, for example). The interglacials in this series hit a hard negative feedback at only slightly above present. The only “tipping point” that exists is to the downside.

Steve Mosher, you need to go to the next step. Now that you’ve characterized Annan as a “Luke”, do you feel we should mitigate for CO2 emissions or promote it as a boon to the undeveloped countries. Which way do you lean, Sir.
##############################

First off I rarely talk about policy or politics because I think it distracts from the science. And it gets people thinking about motives and greed and really spoils a civilized exchange.

1. We are not prepared for the storms and weather of our grandparents. Regardless of the cause of Sandy, we should see that such storms are to be expected given the past. Perhaps things will get worse, but remember the evidence shows we are not prepared for the storms of the past much less the storms of the future.
2. Whatever global warming has in store for us in the next 30 years, there is nothing we can do on the mitigation side to change that. the science shows us that it is already baked into the system.
put another way, mitigation doesnt change anything for the next 30 years.

That argues for putting policies in place for a more resilient society and more resilient world. Change will come. we are not prepared for ‘normal’ weather, much less worse weather. We would do well to focus on making our society more resilient. Its stupid for example to encourage people to build and develop in areas likely to flood. regardless of why the sea level goes up and down,
subsidizing hollywood millionaires to live on malibu beach, is not building a resilient society.
Massive development in the path of hurricanes isnt very smart. Its even dumber if global warming changes hurricanes for the worst.

So, before you try to tackle the world wide problems of mitigation, start in your own backyard fixing the crazy stuff you already do. Lets take NYC.. have a look at their plan. they plan to move 1 million more people into an area that is ripe for a disaster. Sorry, that’s just stupid regardless of the truth of AGW. and if AGW is true its even more stupid.

Energy: The big problem is how to produce power for the 6Billion people who will have no power in 2050. That problem wont be solved by focusing on solutions that work for rich countries. Put another way, coal gas and nuclear and big grids dont work for the billions who live in poverty. its not about C02 its about trying to push centralized big iron solutions to countries were a different approach is needed. And you cannot scale big system down in size, balance of systems prevents that. To solve the problem of energy for the poor you need a solution that is engineered for the individual and mass produced.. as in build 6 billion of them.

Mosher, ” You have the process all wrong. The effect works by raising the ERL. Dont believe me, it was DOD research prior to AGW that settled that issue. Take it up with Christy or Spenser or Lindzen and explain to them why they are wrong about radiative physics. or write a paper an collect your nobel prize.”

What drives some people crazy about you is your arrogant certainty, not about radiative physics, but your obsequious, compulsive, commitment to CO2 as the polyatomic atmospheric molecule that dominates the agreed radiative physics. Radiative physics aside, your certainty on sensitivity derives from models -not empiric data.

…”Its pretty simple. We have radiative physics. that physics is used to build sensors, to build cell phones and radars and that physics has been tested in the field and well, its good enough to defend our country, so I suppose, you’ll have to point out where it doesnt work.”…
===============
When you sell just enough secrets to keep things competitive, it’ll entice players.

EM
You can question radiative physics all you want. You just wont be building a device that works.
If you want to build a satellite that measures the land surface temperature… you know those pretty pictures of UHI.. you want to build one of those.. You have to accept radiative physics.
Want to build a radar for the F-22? how far can it see? well, you have to pull out your radiative physics and see how gases interact with that particular wavelength. Wanna question the science?
sure go ahead. Dont expect to build something that works unless you accept the science.
Wanna build a plane that is invisible in the IR regime? that can fly over a stinger missile on the ground and not be seen? Well, darn it, your boss will tell you to use the physics developed for that. Radiative physics. Want to build a IR telescope.. that works.. oh well, you will need that radiative physics you want to question. Want to build a C02 detector? yup, you better accept radiative transfer theory. Want to figure out how far apart to put some cell towers? dang how far will that signal go? radiation transfer and propagation to the rescue.
Sitting on the porch getting all philosphical of course we can question it. What if it was wrong?
Thats a fun exercise. But monday morning when you show up to build shit that works, you pull out your radiative transfer codes. Why? cause they work and you get paid to build stuff that works.

Now if you talk to a lawyer like wilde who has never built a working thing in his life, well, he might tell you that radiative physics was bunk. meanwhile, the free world is defended by machines that rely on that science being correct. kinda scary if you dont believe that science.. maybe it was a commie plot back in the 50s when the air force figured a bunch of this stuff out.. ya.. a secret commie plot.

There is nothing particularly new about what Annan is saying now…It is what he has been saying since about 2006: http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2006/03/climate-sensitivity-is-3c.html He believes that climate sensitivity is quite well-constrained and that claims that it is much greater or much less than 3 C are both worthy of ridicule. Some other scientists are doubtful that (particularly the upper boundary) is really as well-constrained as Annan believes it to be.

Unfortunately, 3 C…or even 2 C per CO2 doubling…is plenty high enough to mean that we are going to have to leave a lot of the fossil fuels in the ground (or sequester the emissions) if we don’t want to significantly alter the global climate and sea levels. It just means that fatalistic notions that it is already too late to do anything are probably just that…too fatalistic. (Even a sensitivity of 1 or 1.5 C would mean we are going to have to leave a lot of them in the ground, particularly as it seems that we will continue to find enough fossil fuels to really shoot CO2 to quite astronomical levels if we burn them all.)

Steven Mosher says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:29 pm
…”Its pretty simple. We have radiative physics. that physics is used to build sensors, to build cell phones and radars and that physics has been tested in the field and well, its good enough to defend our country, so I suppose, you’ll have to point out where it doesnt work.”…
==========
because CO2 theory assumes that you can add CO2 to the atmosphere without changing the pressure of the atmosphere. this is a nonsense. adding CO2 must increase the atmospheric pressure which will reduce the evaporation rate of water, which will reduce the amount of water in the atmosphere.

Mark Bofill says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:02 pm
I’m sure I’m going to regret asking, but what is it with the default hostility everybody seems to hold towards Steven Mosher?
==========================
Simple, in the next post after yours, he says that skeptics that don’t agree with him are ignorant
==========================
Steven Mosher says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:05 pm
I dont think most skeptics are lukewarmers. I don’t think they have thought about the science in a way that allows them to agree with any aspect of it. Its mostly knee jerk contrarianism.
================================
mosh, the science is changing…..this very post is about the science changing
I’m a skeptic…..because the science has constantly changed

Mosh, I still don’t get why you think the lower bound for climate sensitivity has to be the 1.2K “no-feedbacks” value. Accepting the logic of radiative physics does not speak to the question of whether net feedbacks will be negative or positive, the answer to which will have a meaningful impact on the lower bound, right?
———————————–
Thanks Paul O, that’s my position too. I think of myself as a skeptic rather than a lukewarmer because I don’t see a persuasive case either way on even the sign of the net feedbacks. Maybe I’m making a philosophical error but I don’t feel like I can honestly state I think we’ll see +1.2C when I don’t have the slightest clue whether or not feedbacks will swamp that number under or over.
Thanks D.B. Stealy, E.M. Smith, and cui bono for answering my earlier question. :)

Just because you can’t target an infra-red heat seeking missile in the IR spectrum that CO2 absorbs, doesn’t mean that CO2 has any impact on the temperature of the Earth at all. This is often described as the “physics”.

But the real physics is completely different than this simple rationale.

The speed of light, the molecular collision rate at 8 billion collisions per second, the fact that 98% of Earth’s IR emissions are at a different frequency than CO2’s spectrum, an untold trillions upon trillions of photons moving through an untold trillion different atmospheric molecules every millisecond means that one has to start at first principles and at a completely different level than a simple “CO2 absorbs IR at 10 um” basis.

It would be such a complicated problem, in fact, that it cannot be solved. The only viable option is to observe what really happens in the atmosphere instead. The theory is useless. We can only see what actually happens.

“EM
You can question radiative physics all you want. You just wont be building a device that works.”

Goes right to the “insult the person” with derision. Now I’m willing to accept that if Einstein might question Newton maybe it’s OK to question “well understood” physics. Highly unlikely either that I’ll find something, OR that I’m the next Einstein; but I think it fine to question. Maybe even 100 times.

OH, btw, all the “how far you can see” stuff? I’ve used exactly those military sensors as proof that IR travels through air just fine, thank you very much.

As I said:

” Mostly I’ve yet to find anything wrong with it (despite a few odd bits). However, that questioning causes Mosher to toss rocks… ”

So now you see it in practice…

and
“something was wrong with the radiative model”

Mosher has trouble accepting that one can assert the “radiative model” is wrong since the radiative physics is right. He regularly confounds the model with physics. Often when I’ve look at “radiative things” I’m looking at both, looking for where something doesn’t fit right. This causes Mosher to have a fit as I’m not just accepting it all wholesale. He then goes on and on about the physics and leaves the model swallowed whole…

Short form: It’s more about the USE of the physics being wrong.

But at least you get to see some of the “sarc gone wild” with “insults to the person” in things like this:

“maybe it was a commie plot back in the 50s when the air force figured a bunch of this stuff out.. ya.. a secret commie plot.”

That, Mark, is a stellar example of “Mosher off the rails” that does not win him friends…

So, in summary:

I’m willing to do three very distinct things:

1) Question that there might be something wrong in the radiative physics
2) Question that there likely is something wrong in the radiative model and physics as applied.
3) Question that there is highly likely something wrong in the radiative mechanism assumed.

On #3, we have clear evidence that it’s wrong as the “pause” isn’t and mass flow happens.

On #2, we have clear evidence that it’s wrong as water radiates upward while CO2 only radiates significantly in the Stratosphere (see the graph above, it breaks our radiative quantity by altitude and gas type).

On #1, I’ve investigated a few things, had a few false starts, not found anything of merit. And have stated so “Mostly I’ve yet to find anything wrong with it “; so that’s what Mosher chooses as an “attack here” point with a diatribe about things that work which; by implication, I’m ignorant of or believe can’t work. The implied “You Idiot”. Despite being fully aware of them and being quite sure they work. ( I worked on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle… so I’ve been ‘aware’ of DOD toys for a while).

It’s that kind of “don’t confront the 2 things that matter, then warp and attack a third based on snark” that causes folks to bristle at him.

If he’d just address 1 & 2, and accept that 3 was a dead end, but OK to keep checking it, things would be fine. But he doesn’t.

If you’re not giving an indication of scale then you’re just guessing. This applies to statements like “if X increases then Y must decrease”. If I take the spare tyre out of my car it will weigh less and hence I will use less fuel. Will I notice that I notice that I’m getting more mileage from that?

Small additions of mass to the atmosphere in the form of CO2 will enhance it’s effect. It’s presently about 391 ppm (parts per million). Go work out how much atmospheric pressure increases if we add the additional mass to make it 800 ppm, then comment on evaporation.

quoting climate scientist James Annan, who one could call a member of the “hockey team” based on his strong past opinions related to AGW and paleoclimatology paleophrenology.

Fixed it for ya. :)

quoting climate scientist James Annan, who one could call a member of the “hockey team” based on his strong past opinions related to AGW and paleoclimatology paleophrenology . phenomenometeorillogically.

I might also note that you cannot target an Infra-Red heat-seeking missile through a relatively thick cloud layer either.

And clouds only absorb about 30 W/m2 of IR emitted by the surrface.

And relatively thick clouds represent about 30% of atmospheric conditions versus CO2 at just 0.3%. And relatively thick clouds absorb about 100% of the IR emitted by the surface when present (check Modtran and turn on the low level clouds option which results in the atmosphere becoming a perfect blackbody spectrum).

So 0.3% of the atmosphere absorbing just 2% of the Earth’s IR emissions somehow create 3.7 W/m2 of reduced emissions when the concentration rises to 0.56%. In fact, according to Lacis of GISS, the 0.3% is responsible for 150 W/m2 of the greenhouse effect.

Yet low level clouds at 100% emission reduction when present 30% of the time provides just 30 W/m2.

Let’s give ‘er another six years or so, to (say) 2018, three decades after Senate air conditioning went ka-flooie. By then, cargo-cultists such as Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al. will have joined Rene Blondlot, J.B. Rhine, Trofim Lysenko, Immanuel Velikovsky in a long line of bitter scientific frauds. The damage these Luddite sociopaths have inflicted is incalculable… we only hope they don’t get off scot-free.

“EM
You can question radiative physics all you want. You just wont be building a device that works.”

Goes right to the “insult the person” with derision. Now I’m willing to accept that if Einstein might question Newton maybe it’s OK to question “well understood” physics. Highly unlikely either that I’ll find something, OR that I’m the next Einstein; but I think it fine to question. Maybe even 100 times.
———————————————————-
I understand what you’re saying. It also helps me see why I don’t notice so much; I didn’t read him that way, but then I’m told I’ve got an abrasive way of expressing myself as well (shocking, I know, but people really do tell me that :) ) and that I’m usually offensive when I think I’m being funny. But I’m not here to try to defend, excuse, or justify anybody; I was just curious and I do appreciate your answer.
BTW – I couldn’t agree with you more about the value of questioning anything and everything, particularly the stuff most taken for granted.

Steven Mosher;Its pretty simple. We have radiative physics. that physics is used to build sensors, to build cell phones and radars and that physics has been tested in the field and well, its good enough to defend our country, so I suppose, you’ll have to point out where it doesnt work.

As I have pointed out to you many times already, sensors, cell phones, and radar use the part of the radiated signal that does NOT get absorbed in the atmosphere. These things work precisely because we can directly measure them. We CANNOT directly measure what happens to the part of the radiated signal that does get absorbed. We are left to determine precisely what happens to the absorbed signal via indirect means that are orders of magnitude less accurate and that cannot even quantify all the possible paths that might be taken by a quanta of energy being absorbed and re-radiated billions of times between earth surface and TOA. The fact is that radar, cell phones, and so on are a simple point to point transmission. Suggesting that these are in any way, shape, or form, analogous to energy flux from earth surface to TOA is simply absurd.

We know from first principles, verified by testing, that doubling will get us to 1.2C.

Yes we do. In an atmospheric air column with constant water vapour concentration from top to bottom and no feedbacks. No such thing exists.

Steve MOsher writes:
“I dont think most skeptics are lukewarmers. I don’t think they have thought about the science in a way that allows them to agree with any aspect of it. Its mostly knee jerk contrarianism.”

What breathtaking arrogance. And yet, so utterly typical. I have no reason to doubt that you mean well, and I also appreciate you’re quite a smart fellow, The only inference left is that you suffer some sort of pathology. I have a brother with delusional disorder. He has an IQ of 145 and yet is also convinced that the FBI is following him. Sad.

You are welcome. Generally I ‘give the benefit of the doubt’ and don’t let such petty barbs actually bother me. More just pointing out how it works.

(Oh, and notice that somehow Mosher made a ‘leap’ from “question the physics” to “not willing to use it”. That’s a false leap. I’m quite sure even Einstein was willing to USE Newtonian mechanics while knowing “it was wrong” outside the rest plane… So I’m quite willing to USE the radiative physics. Even while questioning it.)

Darren Potter says:
February 1, 2013 at 1:41 pm
“Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action.”

Are we looking at a crack in the dam? Leaky statement that could implicate a few Hockey Stick players with knowingly committing government fraud, crimes against humanity? Resulting in them turning State’s evidence with plea bargains, leading to even more of GW Alarmists going down.
——————-
Great plot but I’ll wait for the movie.
cn

Energy: The big problem is how to produce power for the 6Billion people who will have no power in 2050. That problem wont be solved by focusing on solutions that work for rich countries. Put another way, coal gas and nuclear and big grids dont work for the billions who live in poverty. its not about C02 its about trying to push centralized big iron solutions to countries were a different approach is needed. And you cannot scale big system down in size, balance of systems prevents that. To solve the problem of energy for the poor you need a solution that is engineered for the individual and mass produced.. as in build 6 billion of them.

“Centralized big iron solutions” have worked in one formerly poor country: China.

However, I would like to see rocket stoves distributed widely in the third world, to reduce environmental damage from wood smoke and forest cutting. Ditto for glass chimneys for oil-burning lamps.

pokerguy says:
February 1, 2013 at 7:45 pm
Steve MOsher writes:
“I dont think most skeptics are lukewarmers. I don’t think they have thought about the science in a way that allows them to agree with any aspect of it. Its mostly knee jerk contrarianism.”
What breathtaking arrogance.
>>>>>>>>>>

I object also to this characterization Mosher. As you no doubt are aware, I tend to react rather negatively when someone makes bizarre claims such as “back radiation” not existing, or the even more absurd “it exists but it doesn’t do anything when it reaches the surface”. These claims simply defy common sense versus easily understood examples such as the earth being warmer than the moon despite getting the same average insolation.

By your definition, I’m a lukewarmer. But I define myself as a skeptic. Not because I don’t understand or accept the physics though. When one defines themselves as a skeptic, one must ask the question; skeptical of what? I’m skeptical of the C in CAGW. I’m skeptical of the order of magnitude and sign of feedbacks. I’m even skeptical of the direct effects of doubling of CO2 because the value of 1.2 degrees per doubling is calculated against an air column in which water vapour concentration is uniform, no such air column exists, and I’m not convinced that the effect will be linear when extrapolated to surface temps (and I have sound physics upon which to justify that skepticism).

The calibration of ARM pyrgeometers continues to be a topic of intense research to achieve the goal of accurate field measurements that are traceable to a recognized reference standard. The original EPLAB factory calibrations were used for all initial ARM pyrgeometer deployments. Between 2002 and 2004, all SKYRAD, GNDRAD, Solar and Infrared Stations, and BRS pyrgeometers were calibrated using the then newly-developed National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Pyrgeometer Blackbody Calibration System. Recent results of data analyses by the Broadband Heating Rate Profile, including the Longwave Quality Measurement Experiment comparisons involving the Atmospheric Emitted Radiation Interferometer (AERI), indicated a significant and consistent pyrgeometer measurement bias of about -12 Wm-2 ± 5 Wm-2 under clear-sky conditions. By March 2006, the resulting BCR-01162, Remove Pyrgeometer Calibration Bias, returned all pyrgeometer calibration values for field measurements to the original EPLAB thermopile sensitivities and dome correction factors set to 4.0 as originally deployed until the pyrgeometer calibration issues could be resolved.

Figure 4 Test using 12 PIRs for a week showed departures from nominal longwave radiation of up to 30 Wm-2. New calibration procedure (Reda, et al. 2003) reduced that to 10Wm-2.

Figure 7 In 2006: “Measurements agree for all sky conditions to within +/- 5 Wm-2.”

Figure 9 In 2006: Outdoor comparison of 13 pyrgeometers at NOAA/Geophysical Monitoring Division in Boulder, Colorado for several days in February 2006 show maximum differences of 10 Wm-2.

Conclusions
Longwave irradiance data precision and accuracy depends on the method of calibration and the availability of a recognized measurement reference.

Adjusting the ARM/NREL blackbody coefficients using the WISG, suggests a longwave irradiance uncertainty of ±2.5 W/m2 can be achieved under clear and cloudy sky
conditions, during daytime and nighttime, thus reducing the uncertainty by a factor of four compared to present/historical data collection methods.

Thus, it seems that the forcing of 3.39 Wm-2 would appear to be about the same size as the measurement error for using the new and improved calibration method and and about an order of magnitude smaller than historical measurement error (prior to 2006, or so). At first blush, one would be tempted to say that the forcing of 3.39 Wm-2 would statistically probably be indistinguishable from zero, but that depends on whether the Modtran calculations are based on actual measurements and on whether the two numbers are directly comparable. Clearly, if the instruments alone have an error of about 3 Wm-2, then the total measurement error would be larger, but how much larger I haven't tried to estimate.

The problem is they say she’s a witch.
We say she is not a witch.
But they say she’s a witch.
And even though we’ve proven there’s no such thing as witches they say she’s a witch.
They’re gonna burn her at the stake with our tax money.
And what could we do about it?
cn

Yet another smashing, first rate post by davidmhoffer. He was responding to the following:

“Steven Mosher;
Its pretty simple. We have radiative physics. that physics is used to build sensors, to build cell phones and radars and that physics has been tested in the field and well, its good enough to defend our country, so I suppose, you’ll have to point out where it doesnt work.”

It always saddens me to respond to Mosher on physics. Seriously, it makes me feel like I am punching a six year old. Time and again he has made it clear that he believes that the physics of AGW is sound because it is written down in a text somewhere when the text addresses none of the issues that challenge the AGW thesis, issues such as forcings, and addresses no important empirical claims about the environment whatsoever. Mosher clearly believes that because programmers and climate modelers have taken a course in physics or read a text that the physics in climate models and climate science generally must be sound. Such thinking betrays an ignorance of physics, computer models, and climate so profound that I cannot imagine how to explain it

Mark Bofill says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:02 pm
I’m sure I’m going to regret asking, but what is it with the default hostility everybody seems to hold towards Steven Mosher? I never seem to catch him saying anything particularly outrageous and I’ve been quietly puzzled about this for quite some time now. I mean, is he a bad guy in everyone’s eyes because of BEST, is that what it is? I’ve heard him defend adjustments to temperature records, often stating that you could take the adjustments out and still get the same answer, is it about this? I get that he can be annoying as hell, is that what it’s about? I ask mostly because he impressed the heck out of me by deducing Gleick’s involvement in the Heartland business, after which I started paying attention to his posts, and I’ve failed to see since what it is about the guy that gets everybody so riled up.
Just asking, if it’s all the same to anyone who wants to clue me in, I’d just like to add that I’m asking honestly, no particular need in my eyes to hand me my own decapitated head in your answer.

I have no hostility towards English majors like Mosher. I do have a problem with those who take what he says seriously without knowing his background; Mosher’s educational background consists of BA’s in English Literature and Philosophy. His “scientific” background involves bringing MP3 players to market for Creative Labs as a marketing director.

It is no coincidence that an English major would be the one to deduce Gleick’s involvement in the Heartland scandal since it involved recognition of nuance in written language. How that translates into caring what he has to say on scientific issues I have no idea.

Mosher frequently posts nonsensical “riddle” like comments here and rarely responds to criticism. When pressed he usually disengages and runs away. His comment tone reflects a superiority complex, believing himself to be the true “rational thinker”. He also frequently throws Anthony and other skeptics under the bus at other websites.

I also suspect he was the one behind the fabricated Muller as a recovering skeptic meme in the NYT op-ed. Which was easily crushed. His commenting is largely manipulative and or trolling. Manipulation of skeptics is the goal of those associated with BEST and people like Judith Curry. They want to siphon off the huge number of people who became skeptical after climategate to their brand of “luke warmerism” just with no change in policy proposals. Unfortunately too many people are naturally inclined to “moderate” type arguments but only so long as you can stereo-type those who disagree with you as “fringe”, peer-pressure does the rest.

PS: As for making society more resilient, I agree with that idea too. I think that multi-storey buildings in flood-prone areas should have emergency supplies stockpiled in a locked shed on the roof, that emergency generators should be required there, that barriers against water intrusion, and backup water pumps should be required of big office buildings in such areas, that a local-area communications infrastructure and procedure should be in place, within and between buildings, etc. I’ve described these in much more detail elsewhere, on a few Bloomberg threads.

Before Mosh worked in Marketing, he was writing code for aerospace simulators. I don’t know if it’s on his resume or not. He has written his own temperature index code before he joined the BEST team. Attempting to disparage his qualifications based on his college major is just ignorant. Argue with his points, his style, his sloppy extra line breaks, but there is nothing wrong with being self-taught in science or computer programming and to attempt to belittle him this way is less than petty, it is simply juvenile.

Government is the reason behind the increase in population in flood prone regions. Without government subsidized flood insurance only those that could afford to have their homes flooded would take the risk as market based flood insurance premiums would do the rest. So long as government is in the flood insurance business you will see an increase in population in flood prone areas.

With that being said I do not feel it is justified to punish those who have been misled by government boondoggles and prefer an attrition strategy to reverse the trend. Most home owners pay enough in income taxes over their lifetime to cover a one time flood insurance payment for their house by the government anyway, after which time the property owner should be left with a choice or selling or obtaining private sector insurance.

“I dont think most skeptics are lukewarmers. I don’t think they have thought about the science in a way that allows them to agree with any aspect of it. Its mostly knee jerk contrarianism.”
———————————————————————————————————

Mr. Mosher please.

I wish I could take you seriously. It does not matter whether the instrumental record has or has not been mucked about with. I submit that you and every one else had better hope and pray that CO2 is the heathen devil gas it is made out to be. Because radical warmist to lukewarmer has one, and only one, thing going for them. The Holocene had better turn out to be another interglacial anomaly, like MIS-11 (the Holsteinian) was, lasting somewhere between 1.5 to 2.0 precession cycles. Because if it turns out to be like 5 of the last 6 interglacials, it will last on the order of half a precession cycle, which at present would be 23,000/2=11,500. And this year, the Holocene turns 11,716 years old……

Either the Holocene “goes long”, like MIS-11 did, or this is all just a silly buggers game.

Go ahead, play your one shot in six hand, strip the late Holocene climate security blanket to whatever concentration you wish.

But just before you do, take a moment to ponder the awesome anthropogenic signal to natural noise ratio that seems to be incumbent at most end interglacials. And this might bring us closer to what actually constitutes “knee jerk contrarianism”.

The truly fascinating thing here is that it really does not matter what you believe. End extreme interglacials seem to have BESTed the very BEST anthropogenic signals anyone has yet contrived. Just how, precisely, do you attribute anthropogenic signal 1 to perhaps almost 2 orders of magnitude below the normal natural end extreme interglacial noise?

Viewed from the perspective that even on things which actually have happened the science is not that particularly well-settled, what would be the things you would convince me with such that I could hear your wailings against such stunning end-extreme-interglacial normal climate noise?

“Knee jerk contrarianism”, in such a situation, might well be perceived as getting all worked-up about something catastrophic, which at best, might come in at 10% if what has happened at least twice in post-MPT time. At worst, maybe one hundredth.

Which, in the end analysis, means that I fret a lot more about bad bug bites than I do about orders of magnitude worse things that might happen anyway, with or without your BEST efforts.

“It’s like two fleas arguing about who owns the dog they are riding on….” Crocodile Dundee

After reading Mosher’s comments, you simply come off as an arogant, condescending, egotistical, “How dare you question me…I’m smarter than you” individual. Very unbecoming of an individual who may be in fact be very intelligent and has some idea of what he’s talking about (although stuck on radiative physics). To get respect you must offer it too. The childlike tone of your sometimes venomous comments belong on Twitter, not WUWT. Please, tone it down a bit.

Jeez, I am very familiar with computer programming resumes and Mosher does not even list a language he is proficient in. He has no formal training in anything computer science related. “Written code” can mean anything, including writing scripts or customizing pre-made files.

His resume specifically says, “Developed computer simulation models for aircraft systems and war games.” and “Created and coded data collection and analysis systems.” That can mean anything and looks like resume padding. Why did he not list the language he “coded” in? Programmers who actually write software are much more clear and detailed about what they actually did. People who give ideas about what should be in a simulation can claim to be part of the “development team” that does not mean they programmed anything. You can claim to “create and code data collection and analysis systems.” by writing a script to extract data from a DB. None of which is a scientific credential let alone the backbone of a computer programming resume.

Only non computer science academics would fall for it. Conveniently this makes up the entire BEST team.

He explicitly sells himself as a “Marketing Consultant”. Marketing and Sales are the two most frequently used words on his resume.

Those who think they are programmers is one of the things wrong with climate science,

Yes there is a lot of things wrong with selling yourself as something you are not and I do not consider an English major to have any relevant scientific credentials no matter how much he pads his resume.

“Small additions of mass to the atmosphere in the form of CO2 will enhance it’s effect. It’s presently about 391 ppm (parts per million). Go work out how much atmospheric pressure increases if we add the additional mass to make it 800 ppm, then comment on evaporation.”

– – –
Take into consideration what is physically happening. A carbon atom is attaching to two pre-existing oxygen atoms already present in the atmosphere. So we are not adding CO2 to the atmosphere so much as adding carbon atoms to the atmosphere.

davidmhoffer says@: Steven Mosher; We know from first principles, verified by testing, that doubling will get us to 1.2C.

Yes we do. In an atmospheric air column with constant water vapour
concentration from top to bottom and no feedbacks. No such thing exists.

Thank you David–I was going to ask what “testing” could verify that? It’s certainly not being verified out in the atmosphere! But I thought, and rightfully so, that I am not qualified to ask even that. So you did it for me!

What I am going to ask, and still not qualified, is about the adjusted surface temperature being pretty correct within .2C. Mosher says, : Well, its pretty easy to test. I take a random sample of around 300 stations. I construct an estimate for the temperature at other locations. i used my sample of 500 to predict the other locations.
Guess what? damn, those estimates of out of sample cases are always bang on.

How come when the JMA doesn’t use the value added temps, they deviate so much from the climatological party line–or is their purple line within that .2C correct margin? It’s a .25 degree difference–so if that is “probably correct,” as Mr. Mosher says, then move along, nothing to see in the CLIMAT report data without adjustments. Means nothing. Is that what he is saying?

“Want to build a radar for the F-22? how far can it see? well, you have to pull out your radiative physics …”
“But monday morning when you show up to build shit that works, you pull out your radiative transfer codes.”

Or you could do something called prototyping and testing, (as in NAZI’s Horten Ho 229). Which may just show you that knowledge of radiative physics and assumptions of real world interactions isn’t perfect, and computer models that were coded are as buggy as most other programming. Later, perhaps being why computer Climate models have been failing to agree with mother nature. Of course starting with the faulty assumption that CO2 was ‘the’ cause, likely didn’t help said Climate models… ;)

Well, its pretty easy to test [i.e. the claimed accuracy of surface station records].I take a random sample of around 300 stations. I construct an estimate for the temperature at other locations. i used my sample of 500 to predict the other locations.
Guess what? damn, those estimates of out of sample cases are always bang on.
Wanna know something even better. So, you might think you’re right. I used to think that too. But, I pulled out my feynman, tested your idea and had to give your idea up.
go figure.

I think you will find that what you are testing here is the consistency of the temperatures, not the accuracy. If you added 1 degree to all of the temperatures, you would get the same result. I suggest you might do better to take into account Anthony Watts’ findings aboiut station siting and perhaps also compare surface station records against satellite measurements.

Mosher is a lukewarm lapdog. Meaning there is a lap he appeases. The least influential of that genre, he reblathers the party line of climate hysteria using unsound and refuted by observed science to the great delight of the super powers of that underworld he humors. His personal meme is that of a nice guy, reasonable, but incapable of refutation because he propounds incomplete arguments that lacking foundation, could easily apply to a knitting circle as to climate. Generalities abound and his posts posit a mystery left to the reader to solve. To date he has convinced only himself which seems quite enough to encourage him onward. Of importance, anything he says that you don’t understand become evidence to him that you are a dunce and don’t belong in the conversation. Perish be he should come to grips with his non-participative side of the conversation where the typical response of his part of the conversation is “huh?” He hides behind his novel “catch me if you can” debate style which heaps responsibility onto the reader for understanding his cloaked blovia. If you really seek answers, avoid him. He is where thinking goes to die. I’m working hard here to avoid saying anything negative about him, but surely, there must be something along those lines I could add were I to give it some thought, so don’t take all of this as the heaping praise it appears to be.

I’ve met Steven Mosher a few times, and I must say he is not like he comes across in his comments. He’s a nice guy, and he’s not not arrogant or condescending like he appears here. One of his really good points is that he was the first to out Peter Gleick as the Heartland scamster.

Everyone is entitled to be wrong about CAGW, and if Mosh abuses that privilege, well, maybe we should give him a break.☺

Crosspatch says:
…………..There are also a lot of influential scientists, politicians, and various other personalities who have put their personal credibility on the line by making statements on the absolute certainty of this issue. It is going to be very difficult for them to admit they were wrong as people in high profile public positions tend to be more narcissistic than the general population. They believe they are smarter, they believe they are better informed, and they believe their own judgement to be better than that of the average person. For them to say that those whom they called “Neanderthals” were actually correct is going to be nearly impossible for them to pull off……….

Bravo Crosspatch!

This is the non-scientific issue that needs to be dealt with. We have to find a way for them to save face, an escape route if you like. All this after calling us of: anti-science, global warming deniers, climate change deniers, spreading disinformation, big oil shills, when in fact the opposite was true. One example is one lady called me a “denier” in the Guardian; I responded by pointing to the science from the IPCC and peer review to put her right. I never heard from her again.

Many people who did not look closely at the science simply used their high school knowledge about co2 being a greenhouse gas, combined with what climate scientist were projecting for this century and became convinced and alarmed. Most have NEVER looked into climate sensitivity or the IPCC projections compared to observations.

“…you can change the consensus from inside the tent rather than attacking everything and everyone. Focus on sensitivity, work to refine that. You see there is a debate in climate science, its a debate about sensitivity.
When folks start putting their effort into that ( instead of frittering away time on tangents)
then you will see changes.”

OK, but a month ago you said that debate was over and the topic had shifted to mitigation/adaptation. Those are the answers wanted by POWER. Not other natterings.
Not any more.

I am replying to your posts at February 1, 2013 at 5:20 pm and February 1, 2013 at 6:01 pm.

As this answer explains, both your posts are silly, and they display a deluded view of the world.

In the former post you ask

Regardless of the source of all the extra C02, the real question is
1. is it safe to continue our geoengineering project of adding more c02?
2. How safe?
3. how do you know?

Firstly, that is NOT “the real question”: it is a trivial consideration. I will address “the real question” after answering your ‘straw men’ questions.

Secondly, there is no “geoengineering project of adding more c02” except in your imagination.
There is an emission of CO2 to the atmosphere as a by-product of industrialised civilisation. This is no more a “geoenineering project” than mining and making iron.

I answer your questions as follows.
A1.Nothing is “safe”: crossing the road has risks.
Life consists of obtaining benefits which are worth the risks of getting them. Industrial civilisation has many “risks” and several of the “risks” (e.g. global thermo-nuclear war) pose greater threat than the by-product of CO2 emissions.
A2.Nobody knows how “safe” is industrial civilisation.
But its benefits have been immense providing bulk populations with longer lives and riches beyond the wealth of Emperors in previous ages. The benefits have outweighed the “risks” of industrial civilisation although some of those “risks” have been realised (e.g. two mechanised world wars).
A3.Nobody can know how to determine the safety of industrial civilisation.
This is because such knowledge requires a time-machine to view the future. However, there is no known reason to fear that future.

A more reasonable questions than yours would beIs it rational to inhibit industrial civilisation and its benefits because some people claim a by-product of industrial civilisation may cause problems but they have failed to find any evidence to support their claim?

And that brings us to your post at February 1, 2013 at 6:01 pm which concludes saying this

Energy: The big problem is how to produce power for the 6Billion people who will have no power in 2050. That problem wont be solved by focusing on solutions that work for rich countries. Put another way, coal gas and nuclear and big grids dont work for the billions who live in poverty. its not about C02 its about trying to push centralized big iron solutions to countries were a different approach is needed. And you cannot scale big system down in size, balance of systems prevents that. To solve the problem of energy for the poor you need a solution that is engineered for the individual and mass produced.. as in build 6 billion of them.

That is so wrong it is gob-smacking!
There cannot be “6 billion of them” if they lack sufficient energy: people die without adequate energy for food, shelter, clothing and transport.

You make a ridiculous assertion when you write, “you cannot scale big system down in size, balance of systems prevents that”. It did not “prevent that” for the already industrialised world.
A century ago, “coal gas and nuclear and big grids” were built in a few decades in the industrialised world (well, nuclear came later). China has done it (including nuclear) recently.

The reason “coal gas and nuclear and big grids don’t work for the billions who live in poverty” is because people cease to be living in poverty when they have “coal gas and nuclear and big grids”. Their greater available energy supply frees them from needing to use all their time and effort to provide power so they can do additional productive activities.

Until people are provided with “coal gas and nuclear and big grids” then your suggestion of a smaller “individual” solution may benefit them. But you make an offensive assertion when you say the poor must cope with that instead of the benefits of industrialised society.

In summation: Your arguments which I here quote are a misrepresentation of reality, and they assert that the poor must be kept poor. I reject all your arguments because they are untrue and they are offensive on practical, ethical and moral grounds.

Steven Mosher says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:15 pm
“DirkH.
You have the process all wrong. The effect works by raising the ERL. Dont believe me, it was DOD research prior to AGW that settled that issue. Take it up with Christy or Spenser or Lindzen and explain to them why they are wrong about radiative physics. or write a paper an collect your nobel prize.”

First of all, nothing of what I said was wrong – or maybe something was but you didn’t show what.
Second, why are you trotting out an argumentum ad verecundiam, the reputation or appeal-to-authority fallacy. There’s no need for that.

Fourth, about the raising of the ERL, that’s a good point and it might increase the number of absorptions and re-emissions for an IR photon in the CO2 absorption bands slightly. But that opens up the interesting question, what happens with the postulated never-observed water vapor feedback? Will water vapor concentrations in the stratosphere rise as well as a consequence of rising CO2?

Is there a constructal law at work; shifting the distribution of water vapor as a consequence of the very slight shift in energy distribution through the antropogenically modified CO2 GHG?

Has any GCM ever predicted the observed drying out of the lower stratosphere? Not to my knowledge. Shouldn’t this be top on the list of failures that the climate modelers should be looking into? Shouldn’t they have admitted complete and utter defeat the moment this unsimulated drying out was observed, and begged for another 30 years of comparison between model runs and real temperatures before one draws any conclusion?

…is plenty high enough to mean that we are going to have to leave a lot of the fossil fuels in the ground (or sequester the emissions) if we don’t want to significantly alter the global climate and sea levels.

the geologists are yawning

haven’t you got anything else to offer – phreatomagmatic eruption, large meteorite impact, some glaciation or perhaps a little cordillera here or there…

“1. We are not prepared for the storms and weather of our grandparents. Regardless of the cause of Sandy, we should see that such storms are to be expected given the past. Perhaps things will get worse, but remember the evidence shows we are not prepared for the storms of the past much less the storms of the future.”

Steven is spot on.

Tokyo is well prepared for the storms of the present and is likely prepared for the storms of the future regardless of what they might be. My home is located in a section of the city that would, without an elaborate system of locks and barriers, be underwater at high tide for many, if not most, days. While major typhoons cause local flooding (typically at points in the local area below sea level) even the strongest of storms pass through here with little or no significant impact. In addition, all electrical poles are constructed either out of reinforced concrete or steel (mostly the former). Such structures hold up to the strongest winds and are designed to hold up to major earthquakes. As a result, there are few, if any, power outages here from even the strongest of storms.

The Tokyo subway system is also designed to be secure even in the face of the strongest of storms. Subway entrances, especially in areas at or below sea level, are usually raised above the street level. This helps keep rain water from penetrating into the subway system. In addition, subway entrances can be completely sealed off in the event of a flood, further protecting the system from flooding. It is also important to note that the Tokyo subway system tunnels, especially in the part of the city I live in, travel under large rivers and underneath an intricate system of canals.

In contrast, New York’s protection against major storms is a complete joke. There are no significant seawalls protecting any part of the city potentially exposed (except, perhaps, for the east side along the FDR Drive in the Midtown area). Forget about the Queens and Brooklyn shore completely exposed to the Atlantic. And lower Manhattan had nothing to protect New York’s (and America’s) second most important office area from the storm surge that has wrecked so much havoc and which has caused so much economic damage. Tunnels such as the Brooklyn-Battery, were also completely flooded.

The city’s subway system was similarly unprotected as water poured into tunnel and subway entrances. The resulting subterranean flooding shut down the subway system for days. But remember that NYC’s subway system was shut down a few years ago by a summer downpour over about two hours of about 2 inches (5 cm). Water poured down unprotected subway entrances completely innundating the system for a number of hours. New York can’t even protect itself against heavy downpours, forget major storms.

Then there is New Orleans which was devastated in 1965 by Betsy and which learned nothing from that storm. In spite of warnings, the city was essentially unprotected when Katrina came in 2005. Pre-Katrina, officials in Louisiana actually boasted that the levees protecting the city were world-class.

Babbling about climate change is, in the end, an excuse to not build adequate infrastructure to protect against existing storms. Rather, it is an excuse to tax and spend the money on something else because the tax itself is its own defense against “climate change”.

Actually, what he says (if you read it) is that the data is suggesting that it is less than 2. It’s not completely unreasonable for people to have a bit of inertia in their former opinions (and to cover their asses, and to hedge their bets) and not jump all the way from prior belief to exactly what the data says (Bayesian thinking supports this).

— Nope. I was correct in my earlier statement. Below is a direct quote from Annan himself:

“Yeah, I should probably have had a tl;dr version, which is that sensitivity is still about 3C.

The discerning reader will already have noted that my previous posts on the matter actually point to a value more likely on the low side of this rather than higher, and were I pressed for a more precise value, 2.5 might have been a better choice even then. But I’d rather be a little conservative than risk being too Pollyanna-ish about it.”

As I said before, Annan is *not* suggesting his best estimate of CS if less than 2… at least not yet.

For humor, I enjoy reading the English major Steve Mosher’s ramblings. So far in one post he has proclaimed himself the spokes person for the “lukewarmers” (whomever they may be) which cannot include Richard Lindzen since he supports too low of a climate sensitivity (<1c) and it cannot include Steve McIntyre because he supports Lindzen's position on climate change. Which is all rather confusing since he refers to some poll over at Climate Audit.

To be part of the "lukewarmer" Mosher cult you apparently cannot question the "consensus" view on the surface record, radiative physics, solar influences on the climate, climate models or anything but climate sensitivity. And you must fall within his pre-defined range or be banished. Apparently you change things from the inside by being an English major and not publishing anything in the scientific literature, who knew?

Just so people are aware Mosher is also a master of the strawman argument, religiously attacking everyone who does not support his self defined lukewarmer cult as a "Skydragon" skeptic. It all gets very old and boring.

The irony of all of this is neither Lindzen, Christy or Spencer supports his views on climate change let alone policy, yet he trumps them out as if they did to manipulate those who do not know any better.

Anthony, just a suggestion. Rather than having this as the Mosh-bashing thread, why don’t we WUWT readers have a poll on climate sensitivity. Not, obviously, to determine what the value *is* (only the IPCC could be that dumb) but to test Mosher’s statement “Most skeptics however are certain it is less than 1. they think their science is settled.”

Most of the WUWT readership are sceptically inclined, so (providing there is no mass influx of trolls) it would give a good measure of the bounds of scepticism, from ‘CO2 has no effect’ to ‘lukewarmers’.

We have to find a way for them to save face, an escape route if you like.

Sorry, but I completely disagree.

Their irrational and simplistic foolish fraudulent alarmism has led to the the weakening of many economies with the consequent impoverishment of many families and the destruction of large numbers of jobs. It has also led to a doubling in the cost of food along with needless starvation and death in some parts of the World.

I sincerely hope that the people and judicial systems of the West one day produce some sort of judicial investigation resulting in very long jail sentences for the key individuals such as Santer and Mann, and significant jail sentences for the rest, including many of the bewildered politicians that continue to blindly drive the global warming bandwagon.

Poor Mosher. He’s a Lukewarmer but communicates like an Alarmist. Think about it for a second. What characteristic do almost all Alarmists share? It is the inability to communicate. They are unable to state their position without the listener wanting to box their ears for it. Mosh is probably correct in the radiative whatever. So what? Why obsess about the exceedingly small subset of humanity who bickers about it? I blame his peer group. One just doesn’t save the world with a sneer on their face.

As for Keynes’ remark on ‘the facts’ it should be realised that changing facts are entirely compatible with TRUE theories, as such theories will, and must have, had they been employed and the data were available, predicted the changes both with regard to necessary conditions and resultant effects (if…then…). It is only when new data contradicts the the theory that a theorist must change his or her mind.

So called ‘confirmation’ does not justify dismisal of the sceptic but refutation positively obliges one to invite all, sceptics included, to offer replacement theories.

cui bono says:
February 2, 2013 at 4:22 am
“Anthony, just a suggestion. Rather than having this as the Mosh-bashing thread, why don’t we WUWT readers have a poll on climate sensitivity. Not, obviously, to determine what the value *is* (only the IPCC could be that dumb) but to test Mosher’s statement “Most skeptics however are certain it is less than 1. they think their science is settled.””

That poll would tell us nothing that refutes Mosher’s statement. I think that the sensitivity to CO2 is close enough to zero to be impossible to be determined experimentally or observationally. At the same time I don’t know WHY this is so. Why did the lower stratosphere dry out? Dunno. Is the Svensmark mechanism working? Dunno. And so on.

Mosher’s statement implies that people who think that the sensitivity is under 1 C also think the science is settled. Mosher’s statement does not apply to me. I just think that the last 15 years of stagnating temperatures SHOW that CO2 does not cause warming to any discernable extenct. Beenstock et al have analyzed the time series and come to the conclusion that there is no causation; the CO2AGW theory is not working as expected; that is sufficient for me to discard it.

I do NOT have to know what is the correct mechanism that drives temperatures to be able to come to this conclusion. Mosher’s statement is a non sequitor.

So – a contributor to the Zickfeld paper (on which the IPCC relied heavily) LIED to ‘help motivate political action’…
Politicians of all Western governments – TAKE NOTE. You’ve been conned – and we, the voters, are paying the price.
Start assembling your excuses…

I have no hostility towards English majors like Mosher. I do have a problem with those who take what he says seriously without knowing his background; Mosher’s educational background consists of BA’s in English Literature and Philosophy. His “scientific” background involves bringing MP3 players to market for Creative Labs as a marketing director.

—

Hmmm. Didn’t know that about SM. I had supposed that he had studied radiative heat transfer at the graduate level in college, like I did when when I was getting my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering. Or advanced numerical analysis, computational fluid dynamics, partial differential equations, convective heat transfer, thermodynamics… He seems like a good guy, though, when he not ranting about skeptics.

Unfortunately, 3 C…or even 2 C per CO2 doubling…is plenty high enough to mean that we are going to have to leave a lot of the fossil fuels in the ground. ~ (Even a sensitivity of 1 or 1.5 C would mean we are going to have to leave a lot of them in the ground

For your edification,

According to Physicist Bryce Johnson;

If we took the entire know reserves of fossil fuels and converted that all to co2 and put it all in the atmosphere in one go that would lead to a warming spike of 3 degrees which would very quickly drop.

Add me to the list that doesn’t think Annan’s statement is all that important. The wheels will come off the bandwagon when one of the major science bodies admits it was wrong and issues an apology. Until then we can take comfort in the small victories, however the war is far from being won.

The unrelenting lack of warming is the only thing keeping skeptics (and even lukewarmers) afloat. The rest of the world is not aware of the details of the science and the media explosion of “dirty weather” articles is having an effect on joe public.

As for Mosher … he comes across exactly the same as most alarmists. He uses appeals to authority and ad hominem attacks. It’s exactly like you hear on warmist blogs or the Guardian. For example, he states the temperature record is almost perfect while seemingly ignoring station siting problems, UHI, deforestation and lower atmospheric mixing due to man made structures just for starters. How can anyone take him seriously?

Bill Illis whats the source for this graf? this graf pretty much summs up what made me a sceptc when I looked at the long term temp/co2 record and as a engineer could not get it to fit with the “consensus” theory.This also shows that co2 concentration is far from the whole story I mean there is no way there could be a -+40 degree sensitivity, magnitude is way to big to make sense. I.e. somthing else is going on.
One other thing why does people assume that the feedback from co2 is static? I suspect it pushes the temp both ways with variable force depending on the temp, high temp negative feedback, low temp positive feedback.

A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything above 4.5.’

###
Steven Mosher says

Lukewarmer.

Henry says
How long are you going to look at the actual measured black bars and figure out that the skeptics might be right and that we are heading down? It is a parabolic curve down. For one solar cycle (11 years) it is

” Ok, Mr. Mosher, but are you absolutely sure that all of the additional CO2 is from humans and not some natural response to a warming earth?

Are you sure you’ve got it right?
######################
Since science only deals in the likely and unlikely there is no proof in science and hence no certainty. Adding GHGs to the atmosphere is more likely to warm the planet than cool it. there is no science suggesting otherwise. Regardless of the source of all the extra C02, the real question is

1. is it safe to continue our geoengineering project of adding more c02?
2. How safe?
3. how do you know?

Easy, Mr. Mosher: You haven’t shown anything to prove it’s unsafe–except you have completely misrepresented carbon dioxide in number 1 above by using a little c, a zero, and the number 2. It should be CO2 (carbon and two oxygen atoms), Steven, but then, you don’t have anything else right, either.

So burden of proof that additional CO2 is unsafe is still in your corner. I can’t find anything that shows CO2 at this or projected future levels is unsafe, so I have to conclude it IS safe.

However, I will list several huge benefits: Earth is greening up. Foodstuff production is up because of the additional “geoengineered” CO2. Trees grow about 30% faster now than they did 50 years ago. So since you completely ignore this fact, you aren’t an environmentalist at all–you aren’t willing to admit to any benefits at all because it would severely weaken your arguments of gloom and doom.

But here’s why I dwell on the “safety” aspect of your CAGW cult:

All you’ve been able to present, Steven, is a bunch of scaremongering from the same ilk that have caused the deaths of millions of people over the last several decades–one estimate as high as 500 million!

Now, if that’s the result of implementing your brand of scaremongering on a global scale, I’d say you are part of a HUGE problem, Mr. Mosher, and should be held accountable. You blather on and on about hypotheticals but the implementation of your beloved cult has been an unmitigated disaster for the human race, and there’s no relief in sight as long as you and others hold to such a facinorous cult.

You say you don’t like to talk about the politics of global warming, and now everybody can see why–because if you’d get out of your extremely myopic box of global warming, you’ll find the policies based on your cult are demonstrably and completely unsafe. Anything that reduces mankind’s ability to cope with life and causes numerous deaths should be charged to the perpetrators, and that includes scoundrels like YOU!

So yes, CO2 is safe. It is Lukewarmers like you who have made the world far less safe, especially for those least capable of coping with life. I’m cheering for CO2 as part of the solution; you are fighting it–the implications are clear.

Words cannot convey the measure of disrespect I have for people with such blatant disregard for human life.

HenryP says:
February 2, 2013 at 6:40 am
There is no more warming. Earth has started cooling down.
=======
I thought temps didn’t matter, it was all about feedbacks causing run away global warming.
/snark (<do I really need that)

S. Mosher, you are too fixated on radiative physics. In a control loop, the, say, 1.2 degrees could easily be cancelled out by clouds. Which Roy Spencer clearly has demonstrated.

So even though if radiative physics says, perhaps 1.2 degrees, (and it is logarithmic, where most of the warming has already taken place) , the system consists of many control loops, with couplings, and they are not linear; In other words; humanity cannot model the system today.

As time goes by now, it would not surprise me if the global temperature will curve downwards the next 20-30 years maybe half a degree or so.

And people will look back at this period of history, wondering why some very few people were so scared. And managed to scare the whole world with their computer models.

“Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action.”

“By failing to meet this problem head-on, the IPCC authors now find themselves in a bit of a pickle. I expect them to brazen it out, on the grounds that they are the experts and are quite capable of squaring the circle before breakfast if need be. But in doing so, they risk being seen as not so much summarising scientific progress, but obstructing it.”

If we took the entire know reserves of fossil fuels and converted that all to co2 and put it all in the atmosphere in one go that would lead to a warming spike of 3 degrees which would very quickly drop.

The worst that man can do would be half a degree at best.

I am properly edified: I see that one can find claims on the internet that happen to match what one wants to believe. Your reason to believe that “Physicist Bryce Johnson” knows better than the rest of the scientific community…including those who actually publish in the field…besides the fact that he is telling you what you want to believe?

haven’t you got anything else to offer – phreatomagmatic eruption, large meteorite impact, some glaciation or perhaps a little cordillera here or there…

Oh…Okay, I didn’t realize this was the new standard for public policy. Following that, I assume you are against spending any money whatsoever to combat terrorism? Do you think that geologists see a plane hitting a building and causing it to collapse as some sort of major geological event compared to ones that have happened over the entire geologic history of the Earth?

“1. We are not prepared for the storms and weather of our grandparents. ”

Just because I don’t have ‘collision insurance’ for my 10 year old car doesn’t mean I’m not prepared for the inevitable fender bender.

Sometimes we simply make the decision to accept the losses when and if they occur. Of course we lie to ourselves about the fact that we took a decision to accept the losses when and if they occur and then demand that the losses be socialized. But that’s a different story.

Incurring storm damage losses is a fact of life. Anytime winds are going to be in the 60+ MPH range losses of zero become improbable.

Many years ago my high school math teacher set us to “squaring the circle” and “trisecting an angle” – two of the three classical problems. Thus, when James Annan writes . . .
“they are the experts and are quite capable of squaring the circle before breakfast if need be”

The problem the ancient greeks had was to construct a square equal to the area of a given circle using only straightedge and compass. The problem was finally proved to be impossible in 1882.

It can be done, but only by ” cheating”- not following the Greek geometers’ requirement of using just a straightedge and compass.
Create a wheel of the same size as the circle and which is half as wide as the circle’s radius.
Cover the side in wet paint and make it revolve over a flat surface exactly once.
This leaves a painted rectangle with the same surface as the circle.
Finish up by squaring this rectangle (this step can be done even with straightedge and compass).

So if “they are the experts and are quite capable of squaring the circle before breakfast if need be”, they are admitted cheats.

This is rather amusing because I argued with Annan that models were running generally too hot back when McKitrick/McIntyre’s paper came out. He said then (incorrectly) that I didn’t understand and argued that models were ok.

It looks to me like two more years of non-extreme data may have him changing his mind.

Huge respect towards you for your approach and hard work and sharing and everything but….
Suppose one feature of the climate is a very strong negative feedback, for example from the water cycle shifting energy from the surface by evaporation and convection high into the atmosphere where much of it gets radiated into space, such that a higher surface temperature leads to more evaporation leading to more surface cooling and more radiation to space.
If this is the case, and I believe that the relatively narrow range of surface temperatures during recent geological time (last 300 million years) requires some strong negative feedback mechanism, then whatever hypothetical temperature effect CO2 has will be tempered by this feedback, which need have nothing at all to do with CO2, because climate is a system, where the whole affects the whole, and components cannot be isolated, modelled, and reassembled into a faithful representation. So, if this, or something like it is the case, global temperature sensitivity to CO2 is not actually a useful concept at all. Does this make me a lukewarmer, a sceptic, or a ddddenier ?

Wikeroy says
As time goes by now, it would not surprise me if the global temperature will curve downwards the next 20-30 years maybe half a degree or so.

henry says
how right you are … without any calculations? How did you figure these values?
Looking carefully at my graphs, you will note with me that over the next 8 years or so, we will be cooling down at the maximum rate, of around -0.04 degrees C globally per year. That is ca. -0.3 degrees C down on the maxima by 2020. Plus at least another -0.2 from 2020 to 2038. And I think earth average temps. (means) will follow this trend because it has already used up most of its reserves. So the following two decades will be cold. Very cold. Cold enough for arctic to start up freezing again, completely. But if you count back 88 years you will always realize that we have been there before and we all came through…
So there is really nothing new under the sun. Everything is as it has always been. Natural global warming and natural global cooling have been with us, like, forever, or at least for as far back as I can see….
Don’t worry about the carbon. Start worrying (a bit) about the cold…

Steven Mosher says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:20 pm
………………
1. is it safe to continue our geoengineering project of adding more c02?
2. How safe?
3. how do you know?.

1. Yes
2. Very safe.
3. The Earth carried out this experiment at far higher levels of co2 in the past and you are still here. In fact the biosphere has been greening including the Sahel.

Effects of Rapid Global Warming at the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary on Neotropical Vegetation
Abstract
Temperatures in tropical regions are estimated to have increased by 3° to 5°C, compared with Late Paleocene values, during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, 56.3 million years ago) event. We investigated the tropical forest response to this rapid warming by evaluating the palynological record of three stratigraphic sections in eastern Colombia and western Venezuela. We observed a rapid and distinct increase in plant diversity and origination rates, with a set of new taxa, mostly angiosperms, added to the existing stock of low-diversity Paleocene flora. There is no evidence for enhanced aridity in the northern Neotropics. The tropical rainforest was able to persist under elevated temperatures and high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, in contrast to speculations that tropical ecosystems were severely compromised by heat stress.http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6006/957

What it is an example of is people who don’t understand physics and mathematics pretending they understand it better than the real scientists. Here is one example of the level of nonsense there; Stephen Wilde, who apparently considers himself an expert on the ideal gas law (so much so that he lectures about how climate scientists have ignored its implications) doesn’t even understand the difference between number of particles an density ( http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/stephen-wilde-greenhouse-gases-and-the-ideal-gas-law/ ):

However, an increase in V results in a reduction of density (n) throughout an atmosphere which must REDUCE the product of nRT.

And, when someone tries to explain this simple basic point, he just digs himself deeper into circles of nonsense.

D.B. Stealey says:
February 2, 2013 at 12:37 am
I’ve met Steven Mosher a few times, and I must say he is not like he comes across in his comments. He’s a nice guy, and he’s not not arrogant or condescending like he appears here.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

When someone is peaches and cream to your face and claws and teeth to your back, one is best served not to turn one’s back on him. For every person he is “nice” to face to face, he influences thousands with his written word. Hence the saying “the pen is mightier than the sword”.

The damage that Mosher does with his pen is extensive, and how nice a guy he is in person is of little importance.

day by day
What I am going to ask, and still not qualified, is about the adjusted surface temperature being pretty correct within .2C. Mosher says, : Well, its pretty easy to test. I take a random sample of around 300 stations. I construct an estimate for the temperature at other locations. i used my sample of 500 to predict the other locations.
Guess what? damn, those estimates of out of sample cases are always bang on.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The statement isn’t worth arguing with because it is constructed of statements too vague to be called science. What does “always” mean? They did it once, twice, 50, 500 times? They got it right each and every time? What does “bang on” mean? Within 10 degrees? 1 degree? 0.000001 degrees? If you make the acceptable error range large enough, you can make the statement true. I took the temperature of the entire earth in my living room this morning, and it is always bang on…. +/- 100 degrees. See how easy it is to be right?

I will believe the corner has been turned when the science is sufficiently “settled” that billions are redirected away from a few academics / IPCC etc. and towards the many millions that don’t even have clean water. Until then Europe (for example) is and will continue to be a financial basket case pouring money down the drain in an arrogant attempt to counter the natural cycles of our sun. Please God we never forget this is not just an interesting scientific exercise.

Mosher, like all of us, is giving his best estimate as to what is going on with climate. He’s the gift that keeps on giving, which is not to compare him to venereal disease. LOL. He’s making you all think and defend your positions. I don’t happen to agree with him, but he’s mostly elevated the discourse in my experience and done it without being unduly ideological or dictatorial. The problem is with the intractable true believers at RealClimate, SkepticalScience and DeSmog blog, not with people like Mosher, who readily engage and defend their positions.

Jimmy Haigh says:
February 2, 2013 at 2:32 am
“Off topic but what’s happened to Climate Audit? Some company called “Aplusnet” is now using the URL “http://climateaudit.org/ ”
I often used climete audit as a kind of a springboard to other climate sites, and since this morning get a website with the name “Aplusnet” if i try to go there , and it looks like it is offering the domain name for sale or something , does anyone know if Stev’s site has been hacked , or if he has let his registration expire and packed up and gone to the moon or something. ????

There is nothing particularly new about what Annan is saying now…It is what he has been saying since about 2006: http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2006/03/climate-sensitivity-is-3c.html He believes that climate sensitivity is quite well-constrained and that claims that it is much greater or much less than 3 C are both worthy of ridicule. Some other scientists are doubtful that (particularly the upper boundary) is really as well-constrained as Annan believes it to be.

Unfortunately, 3 C…or even 2 C per CO2 doubling…is plenty high enough to mean that we are going to have to leave a lot of the fossil fuels in the ground (or sequester the emissions) if we don’t want to significantly alter the global climate and sea levels. It just means that fatalistic notions that it is already too late to do anything are probably just that…too fatalistic. (Even a sensitivity of 1 or 1.5 C would mean we are going to have to leave a lot of them in the ground, particularly as it seems that we will continue to find enough fossil fuels to really shoot CO2 to quite astronomical levels if we burn them all.)
———————————————————————-
Damage control, Joel?

It’s strange that you claim there’s nothing new in what Annan’s saying. It is indeed well known that his position has been that CS=3C for some time. Other than speculating that perhaps you haven’t read the material carefully, I’m at a loss to explain how you missed his quote at Dot Earth, “A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything above 4.5.”.

Also, are you ignoring Annan’s blog post? “Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action.” In a way you are correct; it is not in fact news to me or others who have spent time going through the climate-gate emails, or who have examined the Soon / Balinuas debacle, the blog discussions about IPCC reliance on grey literature, or any of the other sordid examples of chinanery surrounding climate science. Still, an open and matter of fact admission of scientists deliberately lying about sensitivity to motivate political action from an important and respected climate scientist might be news to the mainstream folks who don’t bother to investigate these things closely.

Finally, let me note that I really wasn’t alarmed about sea level rise back when the IPCC was projecting 4.5C warming, and I’m not alarmed about it at a 2C projected warming either. I’m certainly not going to start writing my Congressman in a panic now that people are beginning to realize that such projections weren’t credible. If anything, I think this demonstrates that a lot of hoke has been passed off as real science, and that we ought to step back and reassess what errors in our socio-political methodology led us to this in the first place.

DirkH says February 1, 2013 at 3:20 pm
…
GHG’s absorb and re-emit IR photons; basically scattering it. As radiative exchange is a quick process, many such exchanges happen in minutes. It doesn’t matter much whether a photon from the Earth’s surface goes to space instantly or is scattered a few times.

The absorption bands of CO2 at 4.3 micrometer corresponds to a color temperature of 600 K. The band at 15 micrometer to a color temperature of 200 K.
…

And, of course, you have been reminded before this is a curve, with those spectral peaks, not discrete points … also, you would be better off describing these effects in the EM field domain as opposed to ‘photon’; maybe you can otherwise explain how a simple dipole antenna works (as certainly the atoms within say an H2O or C02 molecule respond) with ‘photons’ and coupling and such?

If I was giving round numbers, I would simply say 3+-0.5 (at 1sd, Gaussian) is a pretty good estimate – that makes
2.5-3.5C is likely (68%)
2-4 is very likely (95%)

That statement is perfectly compatible with his current statement that “A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything above 4.5” since a value above 4.5 C would be more than 3 standard deviations away and a value of slightly under 2 would only be a little more than 2 standard deviations away.

…or who have examined the Soon / Balinuas debacle,..

I’m not sure what you think this illustrates. That debacle is illustrative of how willing the “AGW skeptic” community is willing to tolerate bad and deceptive science when it tells them what they want to hear.

Steven Mosher:
“Its pretty simple. We have radiative physics. that physics is used to build sensors, to build cell phones and radars and that physics has been tested in the field and well, its good enough to defend our country, so I suppose, you’ll have to point out where it doesnt work.

davidmhoffer says February 1, 2013 at 7:39 pm:
As I have pointed out to you many times already, sensors, cell phones, and radar use the part of the radiated signal that does NOT get absorbed in the atmosphere.
…

Point being missed here, I think, It *was* necessary, at some point, however, to have studied the effects as EM energy transmission through the atmosphere, both optical (for, say, missile launch signatures) and ‘RADAR’ as the frequencies used progressed higher and higher, initially as defense activities and eventually as commercial, civilian activities (weather satellites observing both LW and SW IR wavelengths and DBS satellites for instance)

And while some here are arguing “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”, the activists are still using ‘CO2 causes climate change’ argument (no matter what influence it has on the climate) as a political weapon.

Wildlife advocates, who sued to force the government to act on the issue, said the animal’s plight should be used by the Obama administration to leverage tighter restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.
As with the polar bear, the government is sidestepping that thorny proposition with the wolverine, and said in Friday’s proposal that listing the animal as threatened “will not regulate greenhouse gas emissions.”
Thabault said the agency would be on tenuous scientific grounds if it tried to draw a link between specific emission sources and impacts on wolverines.Advocates expressed disappointment, with Noah Greenwald from the Center for Biological Diversity saying the administration “should not be exempting greenhouse gas emissions from the Endangered Species Act.”
A Washington, D.C., attorney, John Martin, who represented the energy industry during litigation over polar bears, said he expects no change in the administration’s policy against using endangered wildlife to regulate emissions.

So far I have not seen a compelling argument anywhere that proves, backed up by empirical data, the influence of CO2 on a complex system such as the Earth’s climate.
Where is it?
This whole scientific discussion, while interesting, about the influence of CO2 on the climate is a red herring.
‘CO2 causes climate change’ is the ultimate ‘weapon’ of the ‘watermelon’ activist.
Instead of demanding proof that their theory is correct (The scientific method), we are now compelled to prove them wrong…..
In the meantime the activists will invoke the ‘precautionary principle’ (It’s for the children) to further their agenda of de-industrialisation, re-distribution and political change.
I refuse to play their game.

_Jim says:
February 2, 2013 at 9:39 am
“And, of course, you have been reminded before this is a curve, with those spectral peaks, not discrete points”

You don’t have to remind me. Yet the energy drops off to lower frequencies with a curve that approximates the 4th power of the temperature.

” … also, you would be better off describing these effects in the EM field domain as opposed to ‘photon’; maybe you can otherwise explain how a simple dipole antenna works (as certainly the atoms within say an H2O or C02 molecule respond) with ‘photons’ and coupling and such?”

davidmhoffer says February 2, 2013 at 10:15 am
…
I sure have. Which leaves me knowing precisely what the signal that made it through was, and tells me precisely nothing about what happened to the signal that didn’t, other than it didn’t.
…

Care to take an educated guess on where it may have ended up?

Are you at all familiar with the term: Radio Detection and Ranging and the principle by which it operates (‘backscatter’)?

Have you ever had a ‘lab’ class where your objective was to measure the reflectivity (and transmissivity) of various RF ‘transparent’ mediums (using, say, a network analyzer)? … this can also include the introduction of various gases in the ‘test’ area … commonly this is a known field of spectroscopy for measuring the characteristics of materials …

(To sum it up, I don’t think there are very many (read that as “any”) unknowns regarding ‘what happens’.)

I give you a link to an article by a nuclear physicist and you completely duck that and instead take aim at an English lawyer, one of whose hobbies is climate science and who undoubtedly doesn’t describe himself as knowing everything there is to know about physics, though perhaps you do ?

You could instead have followed the example of dear old Leif Svalgaard who does an admirable job in spending a great deal of his time educating and engaging with the hoi polloi including myself. Your time would be better spent helping educate and elucidating your opinions and points of view instead of aggressively attacking those of us who perhaps don’t know everything there is to know about physics.

When I started by asking ‘Damage control?’, you could’ve just replied ‘Yes’, you know.

Well, I guess it is a matter of perspective. It seems like you are doing “damage control” to explain why news that is about 7 years old is considered “breaking”…At this rate, in another year or so, WUWT will announce as breaking news what was said in the AR4 IPCC report.

HenryP says:

Again, I would like to hear your opinion as to why we (on earth) are cooling, past 11 years (one solar cycle)

The short answer is that it is “cooling” for the same reason that you can cherry-pick other similar periods between 1975 and now where the slope of the trend is not positive…And, for the same reason, that one can create artificial data that consists of a constant underlying linear increasing trend plus noise and find periods of time where the trend is negative. This simple concept of how trends work in noisy data tends to fool non-scientists, which is why there is such a divide on this issue between what the “skeptic” community thinks and what the scientific community thinks.

I have asked this question of Steven Mosher and Zeke Hausfather without response. Perhaps you would like to respond?

With global temperature trend being expressed as an average of temperature anomalies, how do you justify averaging anomalies from very cold regimes with anomalies from very warm regimes given that via Stefan-Boltzman Law these represent completely different energy fluxes?

Got me some physics, inter. and dif. cal. , some chem. some EE degree, then some grad work back in the 1960’s at UTA then worked applied physics, EE, electronics with U.S. Gov. operation igloo white in Asia, then back to General Dynimics in Ft. Worth getting the terrian following radar to work with humans for the F-111.

What we found on sicience, physics, math, electonics and stuff was it was not what we thought so much as what worked. Worked the same way every time, worked that way because we had the basic physics, math, electronics, wires, circuts 100% correct.

Now when Michael Mann and his merry band of thousands of thinking ones on how it should work get to the point that it works the way they think it should every time and as in the F-111 some one could put his life on the line that the terrian following radar would work the same way ever last time, then Michael Mann etal will be on the other side of their opinion and on the side of real science.

When I started by asking ‘Damage control?’, you could’ve just replied ‘Yes’, you know.

Well, I guess it is a matter of perspective. It seems like you are doing “damage control” to explain why news that is about 7 years old is considered “breaking”
——————————————————————————
Well, I appreciate your relatively straightforward and honest reply. But let me take your words to heart. Let’s not digress, but instead focus on that part of the news that IS fresh and new. You can disabuse me if this was already common knowledge, btw.

So, what’s your take on this statement?

“Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action.”

Are you surprised to hear this? I think this could be a bit of a let down for those who trusted the integrity of climate scientists, but I’d love to hear your thoughts!

The short answer is that it is “cooling” for the same reason that you can cherry-pick other similar periods between 1975 and now where the slope of the trend is not positive…And, for the same reason, that one can create artificial data that consists of a constant underlying linear increasing trend plus noise and find periods of time where the trend is negative. This simple concept of how trends work in noisy data tends to fool non-scientists, which is why there is such a divide on this issue between what the “skeptic” community thinks and what the scientific community thinks.

I am at a loss to comprehend how you could know or understand “what the scientific community thinks” but I will let that pass.

Of course, when the Earth is recovering from the LIA “you can cherry-pick other similar periods between 1975 and now where the slope of the trend is not positive”. But the time from the present back is NOT a “cherry pick”: it is an indication of what is happening now. And the recent halt to global warming indicates that recovery from the LIA has stopped perhaps permanently.

However, your comment that I quote poses an obvious question which I put to you.

The question isHow long does the globe have to experience no discernible warming before you agree that the increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is not causing global warming?

Please note that using http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php to determine how long it has been that the global temperature trend is not different from zero at 95% confidence one obtains the following values from the different data sets.

RSS
Warming is NOT significant for over the most recent 23 years .
Trend: +0.126 +/-0.136 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990

UAH
Warming is NOT significant for over the most recent 19 years .
Trend: 0.143 +/- 0.173 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994

Hacrut3
Warming is NOT significant for over the most recent 19 years .
Trend: 0.098 +/- 0.113 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994

Hacrut4
Warming is NOT significant for over the most recent 18 years .
Trend: 0.095 +/- 0.111 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995

GISS
Warming is NOT significant for over the most recent 17 years .
Trend: 0.116 +/- 0.122 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996

The times to the nearest month when warming is not significant for each set are:
RSS since September 1989;
UAH since April 1993;
Hadcrut3 since September 1993;
Hadcrut4 since August 1994 and
GISS since October 1995

The short answer is that it is “cooling” for the same reason that you can cherry-pick other similar periods between 1975 and now where the slope of the trend is not positive…And, for the same reason, that one can create artificial data that consists of a constant underlying linear increasing trend plus noise and find periods of time where the trend is negative. This simple concept of how trends work in noisy data tends to fool non-scientists, which is why there is such a divide on this issue between what the “skeptic” community thinks and what the scientific community thinks.

You have it 100% wrong, joeldshore-You should have written “…which is why there is such a divide on this issue between what the “skeptical scientific” community thinks and what the “climate scientist” community thinks.

You see, true scientists are skeptics, so you automatically preclude any of those who agree with you as being “scientists”. And you can write all sorts of fiction, but temperatures are not controlled by CO2; models do a horrible job of forecasting (they can’t even hindcast); and you have a perfect double fail, joel.

But I’ll lump you in the same group as Steven Mosher–those responsible for the deaths of literally millions of earth’s human inhabitants because you’ve been suckered into the Global Warming cult, which no right-thinking person would ever do, joel.

Consider yourself executioner by design or default–either way it matters a great deal to all of the victims of your vile “climate science”.

(Or are you going to somehow justify “saving humanity” by killing humanity??)

> Mosher :
> lukewarmers dont have to attack the surface record,
> its probably correct to within .2C

I disagree with the claimed accuracy of the surface record.
The network of temperature stations is being treated as if
it were a survey, whereas in fact it is a dog’s breakfast, and
being asked to fulfill a role for which it was never intended.

##################
Well, its pretty easy to test. I take a random sample of around 300 stations. I construct an estimate for the temperature at other locations. i used my sample of 500 to predict the other locations.
Guess what? damn, those estimates of out of sample cases are always bang on.
Wanna know something even better. So, you might think you’re right. I used to think that too. But, I pulled out my feynman, tested your idea and had to give your idea up.
go figure.

Steven Mosher: Which comments are “crazy refusals over radiative physics”? Plenty of people write about non-radiative heat transfer processes, and the non-equilibrium, non-steady state, non-stationarity of the overall system than make inferences from simple radiative models suspect. Don’t even lukewarmers have to drop the (crazy ?) refusals to acknowledge these limitations of the science?
…..
We know from first principles, verified by testing, that doubling will get us to 1.2C. Now, you suggest that other less well known and less certain considerations might overturn what is A) tested physics and B) physics that us used to build working devices. I think the recognition of limitations rightly should be pressed upon those who promote the less well know rather than the more well known.

What I meant was the “crazy” insistence that “first principles” based on radiative physics and equilibrium alone are sufficient to tell us what the effect of doubling the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will be. 1.2C change is less than the global average approximation error of the equilibrium model, assuming that the current estimated mean temperature well approximates the current “equilibrium” temperature.

What exactly do you mean by “verified by testing”? Has there been a “test” of the climate warming effect of CO2 doubling and has the effect of 1.2C on the “equilibrium” temperature been confirmed? Model results are generally called “models”, “scenarios” and such rather than predictions, but to date the modeled values overestimate the quantity that matters, namely the increase in mean temperature induced by increased CO2. The disparity may not satisfy the criteria of a “statistically significant” rejection of the models, but they certainly have not be “verified by testing”. What has been verified by testing are a lot of radiative properties of CO2 unrelated to the question facing us now: given the atmosphere and climate as they are now, what will be the effects on climate of doubling the atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Repeating one of your sentences: I think the recognition of limitations rightly should be pressed upon those who promote the less well know rather than the more well known.

I think that the people studying the less well known, perhaps the people promoting them as well, recognize the limitations of the knowledge. I interpret your comment as asserting that the less well-known processes should be ignored outright and they can’t in the aggregate matter. But they should be studied, and they might matter: the most commonly mentioned is the possible increase in albedo resulting from increased cloud cover.

Please tell us how you know that the “first principles” are sufficient for predicting the effects of increased CO2 on the actual, non-equilibrium, climate.

If an individual made the comment as Annan reports then he is completely lacking in integrty.

The second statement is puzzling in that as I have pointed out, this whole thread is based on the puzzling claim by Annan is saying something at odds with the majority of scientists on the sensitivity question.

He isn’t.

At the risk of repeating myself yet again:

A 2008 review of sensitivity by Knutti and Hegerl says:

“Various observations favour a climate sensitivity value of about 3 °C, with a likely range of about 2–4.5 °C.”

…this whole thread is based on the puzzling claim by Annan is saying something at odds with the majority of scientists on the sensitivity question.
————————————-
Since JoelDShore has apparently split, maybe you’d field this instead Philip. You don’t think James Annan’s quote is at all worth talking about?

“Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action.”

It’s a concise statement in and of itself, but the discussion surrounding it is every bit as interesting. ‘Since the IPCC can no longer defend their old analyses in any meaningful manner, it seems they have to resort to an unsupported “this is what we think, because we asked our pals”.’, regarding the ‘private opinion poll’ he talks about.

Like I told Joel, this doesn’t particularly surprise me personally, but I think it ought to be news to more mainstream folk who don’t pay close attention to climate science. You don’t think this is worth a thread?

Your post at February 2, 2013 at 1:48 pm is as illogical as all your other assertions on WUWT.

If, as you assert, the so-called “consensus” is
“Various observations favour a climate sensitivity value of about 3 °C, with a likely range of about 2–4.5 °C.”
then Annan is breaking with the “consensus” when, as you admit, he suggests the value could be less than 2 °C because his suggestion is below the consensus range.

Hence, according to your own statements, you are wrong when you claim Annan is not “saying something at odds with the majority of scientists on the sensitivity question”.

In light of your previous mind-blocks when your errors are pointed out, I will restate your error in other words in hope that you will grasp at least one of the explanations.

(a) You say the “consensus” of most climate scientists is that
“Various observations favour a climate sensitivity value of about 3 °C, with a likely range of about 2–4.5 °C.”
and
(b) You admit Annan is suggesting climate sensitivity may be lower than 2 °C (i.e. lower than that “consensus”range.
but
(c) You make the claim that Annan is not disputing the “consensus” range, and this claim refutes either (a) or (b).

Mark Bofill;
Since JoelDShore has apparently split, maybe you’d field this instead Philip. You don’t think James Annan’s quote is at all worth talking about?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Well its only been a few hours since his last post, let’s give him some more time. As for the quote, I’ll note that when Pachauri was confronted with the fact that he knew that the 2035 date for the Himalayan glaciers to be gone by was bogus, he said they left it in with the hope of it motivating decision makers to action. When the head of the IPCC sets the standard, we should hardly be surprised that his minions follow his lead.

In the meantime, unless Joel returns to this thread, the list of people who have declined to answer my question regarding the justification for averaging anomalies from completely different temperature regimes when SB Law dictates that this means the w/m2 associated with them is radically different and so not indicative in any way of energy balance at earth surface now reads:

Can we get a even lower sensitivity just from radiative physics than 1.2c?

When people like Steven are claiming the 1.2c per doubling based on a uniform air column in a lab, but ignoring the Earth’s radiative physics without feedback’s then they are no better.

Why does the so called acceptance of radiative physics include ignoring the planets radiative physics? ignored below when claiming a non feedback, while both skeptics and lukewarmers are both included in this category.

The 3.7W/m2 is claimed for a doubling of CO2, yet 324 W/m2 is claimed for all greenhouse back radiation. A doubling of CO2 therefore is just 1.1% of the total. If 33c represents the total for greenhouse gases this just represents 0.36c rise per doubling of CO2. This is being generous because most of the warming from greenhouse gases occurs during the first parts with it being logarithmic. This also doesn’t take a water body into account either on the surface.

There is obviously some disagreement here compared with the theoretical 1.2c per doubling CO2. The reason is obviously because this is partly derived from ideas over land not the ocean. The 324 W/m2 claimed for all greenhouse gases doesn’t warm a bucket of water in the shade during one day, so 1.1 percent of this even if atmospheric levels in future were reached are so miniscule. No wonder we can’t measure the difference from zero now with many decades until the possibility for a doubling of CO2 is reached.

Since the 1960’s CO2 levels have raised 80ppm until now so a doubling of CO2 won’t occur until it hits 630ppm. That means we are 25.4% of the target for a doubling of CO2. Therefore CO2 should have since the 1960’s only warmed the planet by 0.09c. The planet since then has risen 0.4c so only 25 percent at the most has come from CO2.

Therefore the Earth’s radiative physics not in a laboratory, shows the basic doubling of CO2 is 0.36c. This is how it should be when claiming a non feedback or not taking into account any feedback.

Also note that in India ‘central Iron’ nuclear has worked rather well…

While I’m all for “rocket stoves” and better lamps, nothing stops coal / steam from working in Africa as well as it did in 1800s America (then a backwater…) or early 1900s Russia.

Nuclear solutions can be quite small too. (Toshiba makes one small enough for a village… offered it to an Alaska village, but the US rejected it…)

Second the notion about making NYC buildings more water proof. Why they put the electrical vaults below water level is a mystery… (Were it up to me I’d have all backup generators and switch rooms well above max water line. Heck, I’d even have auto-drop water tight doors around the perimeter that shut if water over a couple of feet shows up in the basement and auto-start bilge pumps…)

Steven Mosher says:
“Take it up with Christy or Spenser or Lindzen and explain to them why they are wrong about radiative physics.”
“But you have to drop the crazy refusals over radiative physics.”
===========================================================

Steven, there is one logical issue in what you said. I guess, by “radiative physics” you mean the alleged capability of so called “greenhouse gases” to warm the surface by back radiation and that by 33C. The problem is, that this sort of warming would become a part of radiative physics first after it has been proven to really work in the real world. It is not sufficient to just call it “radiative physics”. It is irrelevant as well, who exactly calls it so without first proving it correct.

If someone calls “2×2=5” basic math, it is still not necessarily basic math.

The same goes for that warming by back radiation, the official IPCC concept.

So, everyone who claims that this “greenhouse warming” is a scientific fact, and is at the same time unable to present a scientific proof for that, is automatically wrong.

Mark:
I already wrote what I think of the comment, again at the risk of repeating myself (yes Richard), if an individual made the comment as Annan reports then he is completely lacking in integrity.

But no, I don’t think a statement allegedly made by one unnamed individual at an unnamed meeting is worth an entire thread.

Similarly, an opinion poll of 14 scientists does not count for much and I am surprised PNAS found it worthy of publication. The opinion of one person (Annan) on that poll counts for even less. (Approximately 1/14 as a rough first guess).

That said, opinions of the 14 are now two and half years old, and at that time, according to the abstract:

“The width and median values of the probability distributions elicited from the different experts for future global mean temperature change under the specified forcing trajectories vary considerably. Even for a moderate increase in forcing by the year 2050, the medians of the elicited distributions of temperature change relative to 2000 range from 0.8–1.8 °C, and some of the interquartile ranges do not overlap. Ten of the 14 experts estimated that the probability that equilibrium climate sensitivity exceeds 4.5 °C is >0.1”

So John M, Annan’s “ruling out” of higher sensitivities, even if correct, does not fundamentally disagree with 10 of the other “experts” who said there was only a 10% probability that sensitivity would exceed 4.5 C.

Since CG1 and the Copenhagen Climate summit, both in the late fall 2009, there has appeared in the public discourse more increasingly open critical analyses about the the IPCC’s alarming climate sensitivity assessments.

Analyses of the direct effect sensitivities of CO2 doubling on SAT when assuming Earth-atmospheric system equilibrium have yielded progressively lower values since 2009.

With growth of open skepticism we have seen the steady reduction of the intentional alarming AGW bias in the science community. Since skepticism about alarming AGW is continuing to expand, I expect direct effect CO2 climate sensitives will asymptotically approach a lower bound in the order of ~0.5C range or less.

As to feedbacks, given the widespread amount of geological research and data, the feedback to increased CO2 must be at least a moderately negative value.

With the exposure of its intentional alarming bias the IPCC is now irrelevant enough that objective climate science progress can start.

Greg House;
So, everyone who claims that this “greenhouse warming” is a scientific fact, and is at the same time unable to present a scientific proof for that, is automatically wrong.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

This comment from an individual who, over the last couple of weeks has:

1. Claimed the results of an e-mail survey of climate scientists in which he filled in the opinions of those who did not respond, insisting that he knew what they would have said had they responded.
2. Claimed that a change in forcing from a change in cloud cover should result in a new equilibrium temperature in 0.00001 seconds.
3. Presented as proof that clouds do not have a warming effect a link to a single weather station over a single 24 hour period. He ignored changes in wind direction, wind speed, humidity, precipitation, barometric pressure, and presented this data as definitive for all situations and all cases.
4. Presented as proof that the ghe does not exist, an experiment done by Woods in 1906 in which Woods himself said that the experiment merely showed that in physical greenhouses the dominant factor was convection, and that his experiment was not applicable to anything but every day occurrences. As with the survey in which Mr House substituted his own opinion for that of those who did not respond, Mr House claims that he knows Woods meant that his meaning was that the experiment was applicable to the atmospheric air column, and that Woods results negate 100 years of physics since then including experiments which have since been done with equipment orders of magnitude more accurate than what was available in 1906.;
5. Claimed that while it may be possible to measure downward longwave, at night, when the source can’t be the sun and so must be the atmosphere itself, on the order of 200+ w/m2, Mr House claims that this energy flux increases the surface temperature by zero.

When Steven Mosher disses skeptics, this is the kind of skeptic that he is referring to, and with just cause.

“Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action.”

“By failing to meet this problem head-on, the IPCC authors now find themselves in a bit of a pickle. I expect them to brazen it out, on the grounds that they are the experts and are quite capable of squaring the circle before breakfast if need be. But in doing so, they risk being seen as not so much summarising scientific progress, but obstructing it.”

If an individual made the comment as Annan reports then he is completely lacking in integrty.

The second statement is puzzling in that as I have pointed out, this whole thread is based on the puzzling claim by Annan is saying something at odds with the majority of scientists on the sensitivity question.

The topic of this thread was set in its headline and head post. It included these statements:

BREAKING: an encouraging admission of lower climate sensitivity by a ‘hockey team’ scientist, along with new problems for the IPCC
…………..
UPDATE: Annan now suggests the IPCC “is in a bit of a pickle”, see below.

UPDATE2: Title has been changed to reflect Annan’s new essay, suggesting lying for political purposes inside the IPCC.
……….

Annan says:
“By failing to meet this problem head-on, the IPCC authors now find themselves in a bit of a pickle. I expect them to brazen it out, on the grounds that they are the experts and are quite capable of squaring the circle before breakfast if need be. But in doing so, they risk being seen as not so much summarising scientific progress, but obstructing it.”

In other words, a major “insider” climatologist has asserted that the IPCC authors would willfully obstruct science rather than modify their prejudices. IOW, they’re acting in bad faith. That’s the essence of the contrarian position. Support from the other side for our position is much more comment-worthy than Annan’s estimate of climate sensitivity.

Mark:
I already wrote what I think of the comment, again at the risk of repeating myself (yes Richard), if an individual made the comment as Annan reports then he is completely lacking in integrity.

But no, I don’t think a statement allegedly made by one unnamed individual at an unnamed meeting is worth an entire thread.

Similarly, an opinion poll of 14 scientists does not count for much and I am surprised PNAS found it worthy of publication. The opinion of one person (Annan) on that poll counts for even less. (Approximately 1/14 as a rough first guess).
————————————————————————————
Thanks Philip. I figured it’d be the ‘lone gunman’ rebuttal.

When a scientist states ‘quite openly’ in a meeting that he’s deliberately lying in order to motivate political action, what does that imply about that group? Obviously, he wasn’t worried that he was making a controversial statement to that group. What does it mean when a scientist remarks openly to other scientists, his peers, that he’s lying about his scientific opinion?

It means that his expectation is that this is the norm within the group. That if everyone isn’t doing it, at least that everyone is going to accept it.

To put it in plain terms, when you see one cockroach crawls blatantly across the table, you’re a fool not to realize there are several hundred more in the cracks and shadows.

Tell me, why would you want this buried? If you believe in the IPCC, if you really think this is the exception instead of the rule, why aren’t you raising hell about this? If someone falsified evidence in a cause I really believed in I’D certainly want that someone exposed, discredited, and disassociated from my cause ASAP. It strikes me as odd that you and Joel (and apparently Connolley as well) want to focus attention solely on whether or not Annan thinks the climate sensitivity is 2C or 3C now, while ignoring as much as possible the corruption that this incident exposes. It sounds to me as if you’re playing the same game as that anonymous scientist in question – sounds like you want a result, and you really don’t appear to give a crap about the means used to obtain it.

I think it’s worth a thread. I’m glad Anthony does too. Judging from the number of comments it’s drawn, it looks like a goodly number of people are glad as well.

With global temperature trend being expressed as an average of temperature anomalies, how do you justify averaging anomalies from very cold regimes with anomalies from very warm regimes given that via Stefan-Boltzman Law these represent completely different energy fluxes?

Haven’t we had this discussion many times before? I justify averaging them because the global temperature trend is just one simple single figure-of-merit. There is no law of the universe that states that you have to average everything according to the computation of the Stefan-Boltzmann radiative fluxes. If you are interested in those fluxes, you average those fluxes. If you are interested in the temperature, you average the temperature.

It is legitimate to ask what the best single figure-of-merit is or even to suggest that a single figure-of-merit does not contain as much information as having a full map of anomalies (although this latter point is rather obvious). What is not particularly legitimate is to make bombastic statements that something is the wrong way to do something when there is no right or wrong way.

As for the global temperature anomalies as a figure of merit: I know you don’t like it because you feel that it exaggerates things by weighting a rise in temperature in a cold region more than it would be weighted if it was done in your preferred way. However, you seem to ignore other ways in which it actually understates things. These include the fact that it under-represents the rise where people live, namely on land, because it includes the 70% of the Earth’s surface where people don’t live, i.e., on the ocean.

Also, while arctic areas may warm more than the tropics, those arctic areas are also much less than the land surface of the tropics (e.g., half of the Earth’s surface is in the 30deg south to 30deg north latitude band whereas less than 14% is poleward of 60deg latitude), so the global number actually hides the dramatic rises in those regions pretty well.

Matt G says:

The 3.7W/m2 is claimed for a doubling of CO2, yet 324 W/m2 is claimed for all greenhouse back radiation. A doubling of CO2 therefore is just 1.1% of the total. If 33c represents the total for greenhouse gases this just represents 0.36c rise per doubling of CO2.

As davidmhoffer has pointed out, the 324 W/m^2 number is not particularly relevant. It is sort of an apple-to-oranges comparison. Furthermore, it is not great mystery where the conversion from 3.7 W/m^2 radiative forcing to a little over a 1 C temperature rise, absent feedbacks, comes from. It is a simple enough problem to give to in an introductory physics course (as I have): You consider how much the Earth’s effective radiating temperature of 255 K would have to rise in order for emission to increase (via the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation) by 3.7 W/m^2. (There is a bit of subtlety involved here…The naive S-B calculation gives you a number of like 1.05 C, which as I understand it, becomes more like 1.2 C once one accounts for the fact that the temperature is not expected to increase uniformly…and it will go up more in some colder regions of the atmosphere, where a larger temperature rise is necessary to increase emission by 3.7 W/m^2 than in some warmer regions of the atmosphere, where a smaller temperature rise is necessary to increase emission by 3.7 W/m^2.)

Again I submit that the opinions of one individual that the IPCC has problems is not particularly newsworthy, especially when it involves speculation of how the IPCC will deal with his opinions, assuming they find them worthy of response.

REPLY: you are entitled to your opinion, the story stays. Be as upset as you wish – Anthony

Well, davidmhoffer, I really have nothing against your distorting every single point I ever made on this blog or anywhere else, but please, do it on an appropriate thread, where the discussions on the issues are under way (and if I participate in those discussions, so not just behind my back, if possible).

It would be no problem, really, just feel free to use the distortion tool, the ad hominem tool and other nice ones, no problem with that. But I hope you can understand that my commenting here on your five points would possibly derail this thread and therefore I am not going to do that, out of respect for the readers and the moderators.

The question is
How long does the globe have to experience no discernible warming before you agree that the increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is not causing global warming?

Your very phrasing biases the question. The fact is that it takes many years (on the order of 12-14 based on a few examples I just ran using that trend calculator) before even a trend at EXACTLY that expected over the long term by the models (which is somewhere around, or a bit below, 0.2 C per decade) becomes statistically-significant from zero at the 95% confidence level. So, trends over such lengths of time or shorter that do not differ at a 95% confidence from a zero trend are not only not uncommon…but are more likely than not. Such trends over even longer periods of time, though less common, are bound to happen now and again.

If anything, the question needs to be turned around and asked in the following way: At what point is the observed trend incompatible, at some confidence level, with what the climate models predict? [Even then, what you then have is, at some confidence level, an incompatibility with the models, from which it does not immediately follow a statement as extreme as “increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is not causing global warming”.] At any rate, I seem to recall that there was a NOAA report from a few years ago that addressed this question in exactly the way that I phrased it. And, apparently, the answer they got was not good enough for some of you, as you have found it necessary to adopt a completely convoluted interpretation of what their criterion actually was (that can be shown on multiple grounds to be silly) in order to argue that it has been violated.

joeldshore;
However, you seem to ignore other ways in which it actually understates things. These include the fact that it under-represents the rise where people live, namely on land, because it includes the 70% of the Earth’s surface where people don’t live, i.e., on the ocean.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Ah, well I tried to summarize for brevity, but thanks for responding. I might add than in addition it over represents winter seasons over summer in the temperate zones, which is a rather larger area than the arctic zones. It also over represents high altitude area over low altitude areas. It also over represents low humidity areas over high humidity areas. But allow me to re-state the question in light of your “single figure of merit” and contention that there is no right way or wrong way.

The theory is that doubling of CO2 = 3.7 w/m2 and that feedbacks alter this number in some way.

Why on earth would we try and determine the actual effects of CO2 doubling by measuring any single metric other than w/m2? Are you willing to assert that quantifying the effect of increased CO2 by tracking a proxy (temperature anomalies) with no linear relationship to w/m2 makes more sense as a single figure of merit than actually measuring and trending w/m2? What justification is there for trending a proxy to prove a trend that we can measure directly?

So John M, Annan’s “ruling out” of higher sensitivities, even if correct, does not fundamentally disagree with 10 of the other “experts” who said there was only a 10% probability that sensitivity would exceed 4.5 C.

Nice try, but you had originally said

The second statement is puzzling in that as I have pointed out, this whole thread is based on the puzzling claim by Annan is saying something at odds with the majority of scientists on the sensitivity question.

You then selectively quoted a Nature abstract and left out the statement

However, the physics of the response and uncertainties in forcing lead to fundamental difficulties in ruling out higher values.

To be clear, (and I will use quotes so you can’t ignore them) is it your opinion that Annan stating that high sensitivities are “untenable” and that the IPCC is “in a pickle” and will “brazen out” in order to avoid adjusting their sensitivity estimates is not “at odds with the majority of scientists on the sensitivity question”?

Honestly, what you guys will do to say “move along now, nothing to see here.”

Yes Definately. Annan should name him/her. Not simply because such a person should be exposed, and given the opportunity to defend himself, but also because in the absence of specific allegations, people such as yourself can portray that hundreds of other honourable scientists as cockroaches.

The fact is, as I pointed out on another thread, I have been a whistleblower on corrupt conduct (scientific and administrative) in a university department. As a result of my insistance that my allegations be properly investigated and that due process be followed, I was subjected to worse than usual attacks, including false criminal charges (acquitted) and ultimate vindication when the department suddenly collapsed and the financial cupboard found to be bare.

At -40, the upward flux from earth surface is about 167 w/m2
At +40, the upward flux from earth surface is about 544 w/m2

So, doubling of CO2 in cold regions/seasons can’t possibly have the same effect in w/m2 as it does in warm regions/seasons because there is a completely different amount of upward flux to work with. But wait.

In the tropics, at sea level, water vapour is as much as 40,000 ppm. In temperate zones less on average and in winter even less and in arctic zones even less and in deserts also less. Water vapour is also a ghg which has an absorption spectrum that overlaps with CO2 (I bet you knew that ;-) ) But ghg’s don’t work just one way. Since the bulk of the CO2 in the atmosphere is ABOVE the layer that has the bulk of the water vapour, downward LW generated by CO2 is in part absorbed and re-radiated back up by the water vapour close to earth surface. Since the water vapour ALSO varies by latitude, season, and geography (land vs water) this also means the flux that reaches earth surface varies based on this factor as well.

In summary, quantifying effects of CO2 doubling at earth surface as some sort of average is near impossible, as an average temperature is absurd, and if there is a “single metric” that is plausible, it most certainly is not temperature. The only single metric that is plausible in this context is w/m2.

The theory is that doubling of CO2 = 3.7 w/m2 and that feedbacks alter this number in some way.

Why on earth would we try and determine the actual effects of CO2 doubling by measuring any single metric other than w/m2? Are you willing to assert that quantifying the effect of increased CO2 by tracking a proxy (temperature anomalies) with no linear relationship to w/m2 makes more sense as a single figure of merit than actually measuring and trending w/m2? What justification is there for trending a proxy to prove a trend that we can measure directly?

I think your statement represents various confusions that I will try to flesh out:

(1) 3.7 W/m^2 represents a top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) radiative forcing. You seem to want to think of that as a certain change in radiation from the surface (through a rise in the surface temperature) but that is not correct.

(2) The feedbacks do not alter the 3.7 W/m^2 TOA radiative forcing. What they do is alter how much the temperature has to change in order to restore radiative steady-state relative to what would be true in the absence of feedbacks. I guess you can think of this as altering the amount of increase in surface radiation that you get…but then the relationship to the 3.7 W/m^2 isn’t going to be particularly simple.

To summarize, I think that the basic problem is you imagine some simple relationship between the 3.7 W/m^2 number and some increase in radiation from the surface due to some change in surface temperature. However, the actual relationship is rather complicated. So, I don’t see any big value in trying to compute what the change in radiation from the surface is instead of what the temperature change is, since this change in radiation from the surface is related in nearly as complicated a way to the TOA radiative forcing value as the temperature change is to the TOA radiative forcing value.

Yes Definately. Annan should name him/her. Not simply because such a person should be exposed, and given the opportunity to defend himself, but also because in the absence of specific allegations, people such as yourself can portray that hundreds of other honourable scientists as cockroaches.

The fact is, as I pointed out on another thread, I have been a whistleblower on corrupt conduct (scientific and administrative) in a university department. As a result of my insistance that my allegations be properly investigated and that due process be followed, I was subjected to worse than usual attacks, including false criminal charges (acquitted) and ultimate vindication when the department suddenly collapsed and the financial cupboard found to be bare.
———————————–
Fair enough. Out of curiosity, what do you make of my argument that nobody in their right mind would make a statement like that to their peers without having a confident expectation that such a statement would be acceptable? Point taken that I am entirely taking Annan’s word about the incident, I will think that through carefully, but assume for the sake of argument he’s speaking the plain truth.

I apologize for my presumption in suggesting that you’d prefer to see the matter buried then, thanks for clarifying your position.

davidmhoffer: It is a funny thing that AGW skeptics often claim that conventional climate scientists are too focused on radiation…and ignore things such as convection…because not only is this false, but your post betrays the fact that you (and many other skeptics in my experience) are the ones who actually do this.

What conventional climate scientists understand is that it is essentially only via radiation that the Earth communicates with the rest of the universe, hence the importance of understanding the “top-of-the-atmosphere” radiative effect of a CO2 doubling. However, once you are talking about how that radiative imbalance gets translated into changes at the surface, in surface temperature (and other weather), you can’t remain stuck in a radiation-only point of view. So, no, I don’t see W/m^2 at the surface as a particularly plausible metric…and since it has very little relationship to how we experience the climate, you then have the disadvantage of losing connection with our intuition while gaining little in return. (I don’t know about you, but I don’t walk around thinking about how many W/m^2 the Earth in Rochester is radiating today; I think in terms of what the temperature is.)

So, I would say that if this metric seems particularly useful to you, then by all means go ahead and do some analyses and show us how this is a better metric than the temperature metric, but frankly I don’t really see it.

The never ending arguments put forth by joelshore are simply an indication of his unalterable belief system. In the final analysis, it is what the planet is telling us that settles the argument, because the planet is the ultimate Authority.

The Authority is telling us that CO2 is insignificant. But some folks just can’t handle the truth, so they argue incessantly. It is their way of avoiding reality.

Of course the 2008 review does not rule out sensitivities higher than 4.5 C. The sentence is superfluous when the 2 -4.5 is given as the “likely” range, that is higher or lower figures cannot be ruled out.

I do not know what temperatures Annan is declaring “untenable”. That is rather an unscientific term for a parameter which is subject to such a high level of uncertainty. On those two grounds I reject the use of the term “untenable”.

Certainly Annan believes sensitivity will be at the low end. Personally I hope Annan is correct. The lower the sensitivity the less the adverse effects on global climate from continuing greenhouse gas emissions. The odd thing is he accepts the basic theory of AGW and is using mainstream arguments to come to a lower figure, to the enthusiastic applause of those who normally rubbish climate theory.

If we are going to talk about selective quoting, Annan does not make any extravagant claims for his conclusions here:

”Of course, this still leaves open the question of what the new evidence actually does mean for climate sensitivity. I have mentioned above several analyses that are fairly up to date. I have some doubts about Nic Lewis’ analysis, as I think some of his choices are dubious and will have acted to underestimate the true sensitivity somewhat.”

(Not to mention the bit left out about concerning his condemnation of deliberate misrepresentation of the sensitivity – “Of course, there may be others who lie in the other direction…”)

Annan’s speculation of how his opinions will be greeted by people at the IPCC does not qualify as science.

joeldshore;
To summarize, I think that the basic problem is you imagine some simple relationship between the 3.7 W/m^2 number and some increase in radiation from the surface due to some change in surface temperature.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

You’d be wrong. Again, I summarized for brevity. If we use the simple average earth surface temperature of 15 C, 3,7 w/m2 only achieves an increase of 0.6 degrees. It is more complicated than that. How many times have I pointed out that the IPCC AR4 report specifically states RF and surface forcing are two different things? I’ve lost track. Nor does quantifying it at TOA change the problem much, it just quantifies it from a different perspective. In fact, the IPCC doesn’t even quantify it at TOA either. The quantify it as the sum of all downward flux (that otherwise would not have existed) less the sum of all upward flux (that otherwise would not have existed) and as such it isn’t quantified at TOA or at surface, it is quantified across the atmospheric air column.

joeldshore;
It is a funny thing that AGW skeptics often claim that conventional climate scientists are too focused on radiation…and ignore things such as convection…because not only is this false, but your post betrays the fact that you (and many other skeptics in my experience) are the ones who actually do this.
>>>>>>>>>>>

I did no such thing. You want me to summarize the physics problem in its entirety for the purpose of this discussion in a blog post? C’mon. You’re raising arguments that you know very well I understand and am conversant with and which are simply a diversion from the central issue.

We’re tracking surface temperatures in an effort to determine if CO2 increases are causing a significant energy imbalance at the surface. Are you proposing we measure surface temperatures to determine if there is an energy balance elsewhere? Obviously that’s not possible. And, you your own comment points out, the relationship is incredibly complex. You’ve not made the case that measuring temperature and temperature anomalies at surface is of any value, if anything, you’ve demonstrated that it doesn’t have value.

Once again, please make the case that for measurement at surface, there is a better single metric than w/m2. All you’ve done so far is muddy the waters.

joeldshore;
and since it has very little relationship to how we experience the climate, you then have the disadvantage of losing connection with our intuition while gaining little in return.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Frankly Joel, I cannot believe you said that.
If we relied on intuition, the sun would circle the earth.
The whole point of science is to discard intuition in favour of facts.

Mark: I don’t know what goes on inside some people’s heads I know that deeply flawed individuals in powerful positions think they can, and often do get away with anything, even when they betray themselves in unguarded moments. I found that out to my considerable cost.

I do not doubt Annan’s report of the incident, It’s unfortunate that he cannot supply more details of the circumstances and reactions but perhaps confidences, concern for collateral damage to innocent bystanders who may reluctantly be called to make an invidious choice between telling the truth and self preservation (a real problem and a good way to lose friends), being sent to profressional pergatory (been there, not nice) or concern about defamation proceedings render that difficult. I hope there was a collective intake of breath when the statement was made. But I am aware that stunned silence or the psychological state of denial can be the collective reaction to outrageous conduct.

Here is the latest from Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson, Today he is Visitin Professor at Uppsala Universitet but still Prof. emeritus at the Max Planck Institutet Hamburg and also former member of the group which initiated the early ‘studies’ re. Climate for UN’s climategroup today IPCC. The translation below is a quick version using Google Translate:

– The warming Earth experienced the last hundred years is so small that it was not noted if the meteorologists and climatologists informed about it. It indicates that the climate sensitivity is probably lower than climate models, at least initially adopted, says Bengtsson.

UN climate panel says in its latest report that a doubling of carbon dioxide levels likely to result in a warming of around 3 degrees. So far, the 0.8 degrees since the 1800s, and then ten fifteen years, the curve has become flatter, while greenhouse gas emissions continued at the same pace as before.

Now accepting that the alarm was to strong, Lennart Bengtsson still can’t accept that the overall problem is the way the issues for the data models were put together without all factors known from 1899 to be taken into consideration. Nor has it occured to him that faked, sorry corrected data, can’t be used when the corrections made origin from instrumentsreading on a vulcan…..When the fox counts the chickens, Norah4you page
He do have problem understanding that we humans arent as important for changes in weather and climate as many would have wished… Mother Nature isn’t as easy understanding as expected!

I am starting to think that the theory of radiation heating caused by CO2 has been some what exaggerated. I have thus far found no proof that it has any effect for it is overwhelmed by that other evil heating gas water vapour.

It seems that some on the team are starting to have second thoughts as their pet theory is falling in a hole as the earth refuses to co-operate. This man obviously knows the first rule of holes.

The value (324 w/m2) comes from various global satellite data projects and was the original claim ( Kiehl & Trenberth, 1997.) The 150 w/m2 is based on theory, but there is nothing better than observed data admittedly with errors. Therefore I am pointing out the flaw using observed satellite data projects and the 1.2c per doubling. I used the older value because I thought this one was well known to folks on here.

If 150 w/m2 was taken into account instead, still basically gives 0.81c per doubling without taking different climates zones into account. The data analyzed using satellite projects already takes into account the cold and warm regions of the planet and how 3.7w/m2 is affected there.

I am copying your entire post at February 2, 2013 at 6:19 pm so it cannot be asserted that my response is taken out of context.

richardscourtney says:

The question is
How long does the globe have to experience no discernible warming before you agree that the increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is not causing global warming?

Your very phrasing biases the question. The fact is that it takes many years (on the order of 12-14 based on a few examples I just ran using that trend calculator) before even a trend at EXACTLY that expected over the long term by the models (which is somewhere around, or a bit below, 0.2 C per decade) becomes statistically-significant from zero at the 95% confidence level. So, trends over such lengths of time or shorter that do not differ at a 95% confidence from a zero trend are not only not uncommon…but are more likely than not. Such trends over even longer periods of time, though less common, are bound to happen now and again.

If anything, the question needs to be turned around and asked in the following way: At what point is the observed trend incompatible, at some confidence level, with what the climate models predict? [Even then, what you then have is, at some confidence level, an incompatibility with the models, from which it does not immediately follow a statement as extreme as “increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is not causing global warming”.] At any rate, I seem to recall that there was a NOAA report from a few years ago that addressed this question in exactly the way that I phrased it. And, apparently, the answer they got was not good enough for some of you, as you have found it necessary to adopt a completely convoluted interpretation of what their criterion actually was (that can be shown on multiple grounds to be silly) in order to argue that it has been violated.

My question was clear, straightforward, unbiased, and simple.
You have not answered it.
Hence, I make the reasonable deduction that
(a) There is no length of time with no discernible global warming that would induce you to reject your notion that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is causing global warming
Or
(b) You don’t know how long such a time would be
Or
(c) You are being deliberately evasive for some unstated reason

Your claim that my “very phrasing biases the question” is untrue: it does not and you do not suggest how it could.

You say,

The fact is that it takes many years (on the order of 12-14 based on a few examples I just ran using that trend calculator) before even a trend at EXACTLY that expected over the long term by the models (which is somewhere around, or a bit below, 0.2 C per decade) becomes statistically-significant from zero at the 95% confidence level.

So what? I anticipated that evasion and when I posed the question (at February 2, 2013 at 12:07 pm) I listed the various estimates of no discernible warming (at 95% confidence).The range of various estimates of recent no discernible warming (at 95% confidence) is over 17 years for GISS to over 23 years for RSS. As I stated, they are ALL statistically significant at 95% confidence. And they are ALL at least 3 years longer than your “12-14” years.

And you make a false assertion when you say

So, trends over such lengths of time or shorter that do not differ at a 95% confidence from a zero trend are not only not uncommon…but are more likely than not. Such trends over even longer periods of time, though less common, are bound to happen now and again.

Firstly, we are talking about a “trend” over more than 17 years but you are discussing trends of “12-14” years. And longer should NOT “happen now and again” if increasing atmospheric CO2 is causing significant global warming. Indeed, there must be some other effect constraining the global warming from CO2 if there is no discernible global warming for such periods: and that is the reason for my question.

You claim the CO2 effect is significant but have not said what you think is stopping it from causing global warming.

And then you put your head in a noose by saying

If anything, the question needs to be turned around and asked in the following way: At what point is the observed trend incompatible, at some confidence level, with what the climate models predict?

That is a very different but also very important question. And it was answered for you on another thread. Wisely, you don’t link to that other thread where you made a complete fool of yourself by trying to misrepresent the clear and unambiguous falsification criterion stated by NOAA in its 2008 Report On ‘The State of The Climate’. And, contrary to your assertion, it was you and ONLY YOU who “completely convoluted interpretation of what their criterion” which I note you also wisely fail to quote.

ENSO-adjusted warming in the three surface temperature datasets over the last 2–25 yr continually lies within the 90% range of all similar-length ENSO-adjusted temperature changes in these simulations (Fig. 2.8b). Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

So, the climate models show “Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations”.
But, the climate models RULE OUT “(at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more”.

But reality has had (at the 95% level) zero trends for more than 17 years whether or not one interpolates across or extrapolates back across the 1998 ENSO peak.

In that thread you wriggled in every possible way – and some impossible ways – in attempt to claim the NOAA falsification criterion means other it says and I quote here (people wanting a laugh at your expense may want to read that thread).

The facts are clear.According to the falsification criterion set by NOAA in 2008, the climate models are falsified by the recent period of 16+ years of (at 95% confidence) zero global temperature trend. This is because NOAA says the climate models simulations often show periods of 10 years when global temperature trends are zero or negative but the simulations rule out near zero trends in global temperature for periods of 15 years. What the models “rule out” nature has done.

The climate models are falsified: this contradicts your superstitious belief in AGW, and you need to come to terms with it.

CO2 doubling produces a +3.7 W/m2 increase in energy levels in the troposphere (well some mythical layer anyway) from a doubled CO2 which increases the temperature of that level by +1.2C (after the stratosphere fully adjusts apparently).

Then we have feedbacks of +1.75 W/m2/1.0C from water vapour increases, +0.75 W/m2/1.0C from cloud albedo reduction, +0.25 W/m2/1.0C from surface albedo reduction, -0.3 W/m2/1.0C from a decreased Lapse Rate.

So, after our initial +3.7 W/m2 of direct CO2 forcing (and another +0.5 W/m2 from the other GHG increases like methane), we get another +7.5 W/m2 in energy levels from the feedbacks.

All together, the 240 W/m2 troposphere layer increases in energy by +11.6 W/m2. This is enough to increase thetemperature in the layer by +3.0C. There is really no explanation about how that affects the surface except that it is supposed to increase in temperature by almost exactly the same level. That is the whole story (except for the part about volcanoes and sulfate aerosols getting in the way as well).

What could possibly go wrong with that?

The actual response data to date says a lot could go wrong with that.

I could start listing them, but that would make for a long, long post.

Richard, you are of course spot on but fighting someone like shore, so blinded by his religious need of funding and self assurance, is headbanging territory.

The head climate druids have been saying for a few years that the models predict/project periods of zero or no trend but what they deliberately omit to say is that none of those periods were shown to be due right now.!! That is their thimble trick on this one.

What Joel has said at the end of his post of 6:19 on February 2nd gave me a good chuckle. To suggest that the basic way the NOAA’s criterion reads is a convoluted interpretation whereas the way he interprets it, which is the very definition of convoluted and requires numerous additional explanations and qualifications which are lacking in the report itself, isn’t convoluted, is pretty outrageous.

We are agreed on the 1.2C number. I do not agree that it is a lower bound.

Let me talk electronics which I know a couple of things about. I can design an amplifying system which when given a 1.2 Volt input produces a 1.2 Volt output. I could modify the design to get .012 volts out or 12 volts out.

Depending on the feedbacks the lower bound could be close to zero. From my studies (not near as in depth as yours I admit) my estimate of the gain of the system is around .5 – i.e. a 1.2C “forcing” will give a net of .6C rise.

My point? Your lower bound is incorrect. Which is not to say my estimate is correct. Just that it is a possibility. And of course I rate that possibility as more likely than the others. One of my clues is homeostasis. A system with a gain of less than one will be more stable than a system with a gain greater than one. Are perturbations damped or amplified?

Let me talk nuclear reactors here which I also know something about. Reactors with a persistent gain of greater than one are slag heaps. What does that tell you? That a sensitivity >1 is not very likely.

When bringing up cold iron ROs (reactor operators) like to bump up the reactivity very very slightly above one and hold it until the negative temperature coefficient of reactivity kicks in. Then you bump it again and wait. Strict limits are placed on the rate of rise (neutron multiplication) until the reactor is well into the “thermal range” i.e above 100 deg C or so. Then you can get a little more aggressive. But not much. Once in the thermal range rod position controls temperature not reactivity per se. This is why reactor start ups are 4 to 8 hour events. I have participated in a hot restart after a scram. But civilian reactors are not allowed to do that due to the danger. Things like Xenon build up confound the calculations. And if you wait too long you have to wait until the Xenon decays before you restart as the reactivity will not get any where close to one. The wait is about 3 days minimum.

Anyway the time constant of the system along with the rate of change of reactivity with temperature is critical for adequate control. Without delayed neutrons ( making immediate reactivity less than one) the system is unstable. If immediate reactivity is greater than one you get a very undesirable condition called prompt critical.

So at the very least the immediate gain of the system is less than one.

As a reaction to my post addressed to joeldshore at February 3, 2013 at 3:23 am,
your post at February 3, 2013 at 4:28 am says to me

Richard, you are of course spot on but fighting someone like shore, so blinded by his religious need of funding and self assurance, is headbanging territory.

The head climate druids have been saying for a few years that the models predict/project periods of zero or no trend but what they deliberately omit to say is that none of those periods were shown to be due right now.!! That is their thimble trick on this one.

Yes, I agree and I know.

However, for the information of onlookers it is important to expose the falseness of the assertions of head climate druids and their acolytes (e.g. Joel Shore).

As Shore’s response to my question shows, there is no evidence that will reduce his superstitious belief in dangerous CO2-induced AGW.

Of course CO2 must induce some warming, but (as I say in my post at February 1, 2013 at 1:26 pm) if climate sensitivity is less than 1 deg.C for a doubling of CO2 then any possible CO2-induced warming is so small that it would be undetectable. And measurements show climate sensitivity is less than 1.0 deg.C.

The climate models are constructed so they project dangerous global warming from increased atmospheric CO2 concentration. Evidence continues to mount that the models don’t work and – as Annan’s admission demonstrates – rodent disembarkation is occurring.

As you say, excuses are mounting, too. Any claim that the models predict periods with lack of global warming such as is now happening is a lie: the models only predict shorter periods. As the NOAA reported in 2008, the models “rule out” lack of warming for a period as long as 15 years and that has happened. It does not matter when such ‘stasis’ happens: now or elsewhen. The models say it cannot happen and it has.

The truth of ‘global warming’ needs to be stated and those who deliberately misrepresent the truth need to be exposed.

“Haven’t we had this discussion many times before? I justify averaging them because the global temperature trend is just one simple single figure-of-merit. There is no law of the universe that states that you have to average everything according to the computation of the Stefan-Boltzmann radiative fluxes. If you are interested in those fluxes, you average those fluxes. If you are interested in the temperature, you average the temperature.

It is legitimate to ask what the best single figure-of-merit is or even to suggest that a single figure-of-merit does not contain as much information as having a full map of anomalies (although this latter point is rather obvious). What is not particularly legitimate is to make bombastic statements that something is the wrong way to do something when there is no right or wrong way.”

Your justification of averaging is unscientific. For temperatures as well as for fluxes. You end up with a meaningless number. Temperatures and therefore greybody radiation fluxes as well are not normally distributed; therefore the Law Of Large Numbers does not apply and there is no defined average.http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/do-temperatures-have-a-mean/

The number you come up with serves only your propaganda purposes. Therefore not part of science. Well, if we count sociology and the art of mass manipulation as a a science, then yes.

A bit of rudimentary logic: I think the advancing certainty about climate sensitivity being markedly less than formerly believed, must make lukewarmers out of fire breathing dragons and neutral to microwarmers out of the former lukewarmers like Mosher. Let’s hear it! Are you former lukewarmers now more tepid or are you illogical.

Nor does quantifying it at TOA change the problem much, it just quantifies it from a different perspective. In fact, the IPCC doesn’t even quantify it at TOA either. The quantify it as the sum of all downward flux (that otherwise would not have existed) less the sum of all upward flux (that otherwise would not have existed) and as such it isn’t quantified at TOA or at surface, it is quantified across the atmospheric air column.

That it is what “top of the atmosphere” means…It means that one is comparing all of the radiative flux coming into the atmosphere vs all leaving it.

We’re tracking surface temperatures in an effort to determine if CO2 increases are causing a significant energy imbalance at the surface. Are you proposing we measure surface temperatures to determine if there is an energy balance elsewhere?

Actually, if you want to look at the energy imbalance, the best way to do that is to look at the accumulated heat content change in the ocean, where the vast majority of the excess energy due to that imbalance is accumulating.

Others, like Trenberth, have tried to look directly at the incoming and outgoing radiation, but as he has noted, we can’t yet measure these precisely enough to directly measure the radiative imbalance.

If we relied on intuition, the sun would circle the earth.
The whole point of science is to discard intuition in favour of facts.

That example is a red herring. My point is that in this case, there is no right or wrong answer for what sort of figure-of-merit best represents the change due to greenhouse gases. So, one ought to at least go with one that people have some intuition about.

But, if you want to do it some different way, nobody is stopping you from doing your own analyses and reporting the results that you would like to see.

Richard, you write “The truth of ‘global warming’ needs to be stated and those who deliberately misrepresent the truth need to be exposed.”

I agree completely, but there is an old saying, “Who is going to bell the cat?”. Somehow, someone or something needs to convince the Royal Society that you are right, and they need to come clean, and withdraw their support for CAGW. But what it will make this happen, I have no idea.

If 150 w/m2 was taken into account instead, still basically gives 0.81c per doubling without taking different climates zones into account. The data analyzed using satellite projects already takes into account the cold and warm regions of the planet and how 3.7w/m2 is affected there.

You are still not calculating the no-feedback value of the climate sensitivity. If you are calculating anything real (and it is unclear to me if you are), what you are calculating is something akin to the sensitivity when the the lapse rate feedback (a negative feedback) included but none of the other feedbacks included. I have explained to you the correct way that the no-feedback value of the climate sensitivity is calculated.

Matt g says
Since the 1960′s CO2 levels have raised 80ppm until now so a doubling of CO2 won’t occur until it hits 630ppm. That means we are 25.4% of the target for a doubling of CO2. Therefore CO2 should have since the 1960′s only warmed the planet by 0.09c. The planet since then has risen 0.4c so only 25 percent at the most has come from CO2.

Therefore the Earth’s radiative physics not in a laboratory, shows the basic doubling of CO2 is 0.36c. This is how it should be when claiming a non feedback or not taking into account any feedback.

Henry@Matt/ Joeldshore

Sorry, Matt. Even that 0.36 is in doubt. Honestly. Even that estimate might still be too high. In fact, it could even still be that the effect of more CO2 is slightly negative or more like close to just zero.
According to my own results earth has indeed warmed about 0.45C since 1968. I am sure the 80 ppm on the CO2 increase you gave must be correct as well. We agree on that. However, I don’t know where that doubling up story came from, as if we are playing poker with the CO2. It is most surely not based on facts, i.e. actual tests and subsequent measurements. The facts are that there is both radiative warming and radiative cooling caused by the CO2. In fact, most recently they have also discovered absorbency of CO2 in the UV region, which is why we can measure it now on other planets (back radiation = cooling). On top of that we have cooling caused by CO2 due to the increase in greenery on earth:
more UV/warmth + (more)CO2 => (more) crops, more lawns, more trees, think of Las Vegas, Johannesburg etc.places that used to be deserts.
Nobody has produced a balance sheet to show me how much cooling and much warming is caused by the increase in CO2. I have explained the details herehttp://blogs.24.com/henryp/2011/08/11/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-aug-2011/

so far, all my results seem to suggest that earth is following a natural path and that it is currently naturally cooling. My results also suggest it will continue cooling until about 2038.http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/01/24/our-earth-is-cooling/
Don’t worry about the carbon. Better change your T-shirt now. Start worrying (a bit) about the cold. It won’t be long before everyone will start to notice….

I agree with Rocky Road that Joeldshore remarks were insulting to me and to the intelligence of skeptic thinkers at large..

Due to my own calcylations and analyses back in 1970’s, 1993 and last year, I second all but one thing – I doubt the cooling will end in 2038. Might be a short plus/minus zero but taking the position in the elips round the sun and other data due to wobbling, angle and such, my calculations points to 2072/73…. but of course I might be wrong.

Please note his pointing out that the Holocene Max was 1.5-2 C higher than today. If we don’t know what caused that high a temperature without CO2 why do you assume CO2 is necessary to get us to a point lower than thousands of years ago. We cannot be sure the same mechanism working then is not working today.

By the way for the record RGB is a physics prof as are you. I would have said like you but that is rather not true.

I have asked you, Joel, several times to write a radiative heat transfer equation that shows how a colder atmosphere transfers heat to a warmer surface with the request that you show what the emissivity of CO2 is at 1 atm and 288K.

The truth of ‘global warming’ needs to be stated and those who deliberately misrepresent the truth need to be exposed.

I agree completely, but there is an old saying, “Who is going to bell the cat?”. Somehow, someone or something needs to convince the Royal Society that you are right, and they need to come clean, and withdraw their support for CAGW. But what it will make this happen, I have no idea.

I agree completely, but I don’t know either. Indeed, the problem is not only the RS.

joeldshore;
That it is what “top of the atmosphere” means…It means that one is comparing all of the radiative flux coming into the atmosphere vs all leaving it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

Oh.
My.
God.

Joel, the IPCC literature is very specific that their definition is at the tropopause, not at TOA. But put aside the fact that you seem unfamiliar with the IPCC literature itself and step back and look at your statement. Unless CO2 changes the amount of radiative flux absorbed in the first place, at equilibrium, the energy flux coming into and leaving the atmosphere are precisely the same. Double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and at equilibrium not only will the incoming flux and the outgoing flux be exactly equal to each other, they will be exactly equal to the previous values.

I presume you misstated your opinion in some way rather than raising the possibility that you earned a PhD in physics without understanding the very basics?

joeldshore;
My point is that in this case, there is no right or wrong answer for what sort of figure-of-merit best represents the change due to greenhouse gases. So, one ought to at least go with one that people have some intuition about.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

richardscourtney;
Our discussion regarding justification for averaging anomaly data has wandered across multiple threads. I’ve decided to expand my informal little survey. Do you have any objections to being listed as follows?

Zeke Hausfather; no response
Steven Mosher; no response
Joel D Shore; no single metric is right or wrong
******************
Robert G Brown; no justification
Richard S Courtney; no justification?

or would you prefer something slightly different? trying to keep it to just a few words (which was a bit of a challenge with Dr Shore)

Appendix B of that item demonstrates that MGT is a misleading indicator of climate change. For example, its conclusions include

A result that is a function of its construction is a serious error. If MGT is considered as a physical parameter that is measured, then the data sets of MGT are functions of their construction. Attributing AGW – or anything else – to a change that is a function of the construction of MGT is inadmissable.

and

Importantly, if MGT is considered to be an indicative statistic then the differences between the values and trends of the data sets from different teams indicate that the teams are monitoring different climate effects. In this case, there is no reason why the data sets should agree with each other, and the 95% confidence limits applied to the MGT data sets by their compilers may be correct for each data set. Similarly, the different trends indicated by the MGT data sets and the MSU and radiosonde data sets could indicate that they are also monitoring different climate effects.

To treat the MGT as an indicative statistic has serious implications. The different teams each provide a data set termed mean global temperature, MGT. But if the teams are each monitoring different climate effects then each should provide a unique title for their data set that is indicative of what is being monitored. Also, each team should state explicitly what its data set of MGT purports to be monitoring. The data sets of MGT cannot address the question “Is the average temperature of the Earth’s surface increasing or decreasing, and at what rate?” until the climate effects they are monitoring are explicitly stated and understood. Finally, the application of any of these data sets in attribution studies needs to be revised in the light of knowledge of what each data set is monitoring.

The latter paragraph of the latter quotation directly relates to your point concerning energy fluxes when it says,
“To treat the MGT as an indicative statistic has serious implications. The different teams each provide a data set termed mean global temperature, MGT. But if the teams are each monitoring different climate effects then each should provide a unique title for their data set that is indicative of what is being monitored.”

I write to provide information as an addendum to my post addressed to you at February 3, 2013 at 9:19 am.

Some years ago I was a speaker at a Conference in Stockholm where Fred Singer, Bob Carter and Steve McIntyre were also speakers. One of the pro-AGW speakers was a representative of the Potsdam Insititute, and I challenged him to agree that MGT is not an appropriate indicator of climate change. He agreed and suggested that precipitation would be an appropriate indicator.

My question and the answer were in the questions following his presentation so are not on the public record, but I suspect those whom I have named would remember it.

Given that temperature anomalies have no linear relationship to temperature, is there any scientific justification for averaging and trending them in order to track the effects of CO2 and the global surface energy balance? As an example, an anomaly of 1 degree calculated from a baseline of -40 represents a change of 2.9 w/m2 while an anomaly of 1 degree from a baseline of +40 represents a change of 7.0 w/m2.

The informal results now stand as:

Zeke Hausfather; no response
Steven Mosher; no response
Joel D Shore; no single metric is right or wrong
******************
Robert G Brown; no justification
Richard S Courtney; no justification

Other people have expressed their opinion that there is no justification, but I can’t remember who for certain. If you’d like to be added to the list, please reply to that effect in this thread and I will add you in future threads. A statement of credentials would also be of value, if the list starts to get long I’ll probably want to add those. For now it is short enough that regular readers most likely know who each of those people are.

When calculating doubling of greenhouse effect from a simple black-body calculation and therefore using the Stefan–Boltzmann law is inaccurate. Black-bodies don’t take into account greenhouse gases and their behavior is different. Greenhouse gases are not proportional to temperature, whereas temperature is proportional to irradiance in a black-body. I agree this is supposed to be one of the better ways for estimating basic doubling, but it is still wrong.

If 150 w/m2 is the total background radiation then 3.7w/m2 must be no more than 2.5% of the total greenhouse energy. Using SB this gives a value which is higher than the percentage increase of the overall greenhouse effect. How is that even possible? Taking 2.5% of 33c is therefore only 0.81c of the greenhouse effect. The difference being CO2 is logarithmic so a additional 3.7w/m2 will have less effect than 0.81c for a doubling CO2 on average. The SB law doesn’t take this into account and can’t calculate how much of a increasing greenhouse gas component contributes to the overall greenhouse effect.

The 0.36c value using more recent updated observed back-radiation satellite data actually declines further. I agree it likely is a value lower than this using this data because the value represents the basic highest one possible. Note – I did mention this below in my post also and neither of these were taken into account with this value.

“This is being generous because most of the warming from greenhouse gases occurs during the first parts with it being logarithmic. This also doesn’t take a water body into account either on the surface.”

I know David Bellamy because he and I have shared platforms at speaking engagements on a couple of occasions. He is a celebrity: I am not. Hence, although I can provide him with support, there is no possibility that I could have anywhere near as much effect as him. People will listen to him but only wonder who I am.

I am a Member of the RS having been appointed to the Association of British Science Writers by the British association for the Advancement of Science, so I have access to the RS Library etc. (which is why e.g. I was able to obtain documents from the RS archives for the late John Daly in his ‘Isle Of The Dead’ study). However, I am NOT an RS Fellow so I cannot interact with or affect the RS organisation in any way.

Hence, I don’t think I can do anything to publicise the meeting of David Bellamy with HRH or to get the publicity to affect the RS. But I will ask Bellamy if there is anything I can do to help in these matters if that is his desire. Other than that, I don’t know what I can do.

Matt G;
You’ve got a whole lot of different issues all tangled up with each other. The SB Law formula is:

P=5.67*10^-8*T^4

P is in w/m2
T is in degrees K (degrees C+273)

Noting that P and T do not vary linearly with each other, let’s go through your statements:

If 150 w/m2 is the total background radiation then 3.7w/m2 must be no more than 2.5% of the total greenhouse energy.

150 w/m2 is not the background radiation, it is an approximation of the ghe. There is no such thing as “greenhouse energy” , there is such a thing as the “energy flux” measured in w/m2. Lastly, since the relationship between P and T is not linear, calculating a % of anything is applying a linear calculation to a non-linear system.

Using SB this gives a value which is higher than the percentage increase of the overall greenhouse effect. How is that even possible?

Apply the formula to any given temperature and any given energy flux and you will get the right results.

Taking 2.5% of 33c is therefore only 0.81c of the greenhouse effect

Again, you are applying a linear calculation to a non-linear function.

The difference being CO2 is logarithmic so a additional 3.7w/m2 will have less effect than 0.81c for a doubling CO2 on average.

That’s not what being logarithmic means. It means that doubling of CO2 from any given starting point results in 3.7 w/m2. So, if we are currently at 400 ppm, getting another 3.7 w/m2 would require +400 ppm. But at 800 ppm, it would require +800 ppm to get that same 3.7 w/m2.

The SB law doesn’t take this into account and can’t calculate how much of a increasing greenhouse gas component contributes to the overall greenhouse effect.

Well it does if you apply it correctly. That said, calculating an average T for earth surface and an average P for ghe is a fool’s errand, so there’s no easy way to apply SB Law.

My question was clear, straightforward, unbiased, and simple.
You have not answered it.
Hence, I make the reasonable deduction that
(a) There is no length of time with no discernible global warming that would induce you to reject your notion that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is causing global warming
Or
(b) You don’t know how long such a time would be
Or
(c) You are being deliberately evasive for some unstated reason

The correct answer is closest to (b). How could I possibly know unless I have actually investigated it, as others such as NOAA have? And, alas, they did not present their results in the way that you want (in terms of the length that the 95%…or whatever…confidence interval of the measured trend includes a trend of zero) because, at best, this would be a very indirect way of looking for incompatibility between the models and the observed trend.

So what? I anticipated that evasion and when I posed the question (at February 2, 2013 at 12:07 pm) I listed the various estimates of no discernible warming (at 95% confidence).
The range of various estimates of recent no discernible warming (at 95% confidence) is over 17 years for GISS to over 23 years for RSS. As I stated, they are ALL statistically significant at 95% confidence. And they are ALL at least 3 years longer than your “12-14” years.

My point is that it takes 12-14 years for the trend to be statistically-significant even if the trend is EXACTLY what is expected by the models. Do you really believe that just a few more years would then lead to a complete incompatibility with the models? That would be truly bizarre.

As for the larger point of the complete untenability of your interpretation of the NOAA statement, I will simply summarize the points I made before in that other thread:

(1) The NOAA statement reads: “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more…” The authors chose to put the parenthetical expression after “rule out” rather than after “zero trends”. Why would they do this if they wanted it to modify “zero trends”? I could actually see the reverse happening, i.e., I could see them writing “The simulations rule out zero trends (at the 95% level)” when they really meant it to modify “rule out”…This would be a little sloppy, but certaintly reads more naturally than sticking the parenthetical expression in the middle. The fact that the authors explicitly avoided that more natural-sounding construction is clearly because they wanted to make it clear that the parenthetical expression modifies “rule out” and not “zero trends”.

(2) If you adopt my interpretation, there is no real ambiguity in the statement. We know what is meant by “rule out” and we don’t have to worry about questions of how one determines the uncertainty in the trend estimate on the empirical data (i.e., what model one uses for the correlations known to exact in the data) because no such estimate is required. With your and Monckton’s interpretation, we don’t know what “ruled out” means (to what level of certainty?) and we don’t know what sort of model to use for the correlations in the empirical data in order to arrive at an uncertainty estimate for the trend.

(3) With my interpretation, there is a straightforward way to explain how they came to the conclusion that they did based on what they discuss regarding the simulations that they performed using the climate models: They looked at all the independent periods of a certain length in these multiple simulations and found that one had to make the length 15 years long in order that fewer than 5% of the simulations had trends less than zero. That is what it means to rule out at the 95% confidence level a zero trend. With your and Monckton’s interpretation, it is not clear what they did. How did they get from their simulations to their conclusion? You have never explained this because you can’t.

(4) As I noted previously, the SkepticalScience trend calculator (the only one that I know of that is available online) shows 15-year trends of temperature data to have an uncertainty of about 0.14 C per decade. That means that the “borderline” case of a trend that would not rule out a zero trend at 95% confidence is a trend of 0.14 C per decade, which would be compatible with the underlying trend lying anywhere between 0 and 0.28 C per decade with 95% confidence. Does it really make sense whatsoever that the models, which predict trends on average of about 0.20 C per decade would rule out an empirical trend whose 95% confidence interval goes from 0 and 0.28 C per decade? That is patently absurd!

(5) Furthermore, the entire context of their discussion is that they are looking at ENSO-adjusted data, where the adjustment procedure is discussed in a paper that they reference. Such a procedure is necessary in order to increase the signal-to-noise ratio enough to even be able to come to the conclusion they have about 15 year trends. I

In response, the only real argument that you have been able to come up in response is a claim that to talk about ruling something out at a 95% confidence level is oxymoronic. However, you have been shown that it is in fact rather common practice to talk in such terms when discussing statistical data analysis, as this example from the entirely unrelated field of high energy physics shows:

When the black line descends below the red horizontal line at 1.0 on the vertical axis, people sometimes say that the Higgs Boson has been ruled out at 95% confidence level at this mass.

Inger E says
Due to my own calcylations and analyses back in 1970′s, 1993 and last year, I second all but one thing – I doubt the cooling will end in 2038. Might be a short plus/minus zero but taking the position in the elips round the sun and other data due to wobbling, angle and such, my calculations points to 2072/73…. but of course I might be wrong.

Sorry if my English isn’t the best at almost 5 in the morning. (I read 9 languages, speak 6 but I have problems with grammar in every one of them. Partly dyslectic while writing)
Given that everything is energy, and energy never ceases to exist, but only changes form, I looked at the changes in the in-and outflow of energy since
Stone Age. The period up to the year 1000, I analyzed 1992 to put “meat” on the bones re. understanding the sea-level changes there been during the period.

ie changes within and between different time periods. Premisses needed to complete the changes in waterlevels using Archimedes principle on impact from melting ice including the landrise effect.

While looking at the later period 1000 AD (or if you so want 1000 BP) up almost to now all changes in Earth temperature, Ice Ages including peaks and such can be explained only using the Natural forces. In other words the Physical laws as we know them. But there is one difference to be observed. That is the period after we humans started to use aerosoler effecting the Ozone layer. At first the ‘hole’ got wider and then after global forbidding of usage they are growing towards ‘normal’.

Back to basic. If everything is energy which only change form, and we are discussing the form of inflow and outflow of energy from Earth one has to consider the effect of the “Ozonhole” as a new factor taking into consideration while analysing the total effect. Not only from the point of view that the ‘hole’ extended the inflow, but also where to look for changes in the outflow of energy not taken into consideration using ‘ordinary’ calculations. Since the changes of Ozon in Stratosphere were seen over the poles I in my analyse taken that into consideration. The only assumtion I have made is that we are in the second phase of a longer global cooling broken by for example Atombombs and for example aerosols ‘hurting’ the Ozon layer. If one look at the image that is one of a very few possible conclusions to be drawn.

Thus when looking at the ‘healing’ of the Ozon holes I taken into consideration the possibility of changes in the outflow over same period. That is where the angle and vobbling comes in. But of course I can be wrong in my calculations re. cooling period to come.

Unless CO2 changes the amount of radiative flux absorbed in the first place, at equilibrium, the energy flux coming into and leaving the atmosphere are precisely the same. Double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and at equilibrium not only will the incoming flux and the outgoing flux be exactly equal to each other, they will be exactly equal to the previous values.

I presume you misstated your opinion in some way rather than raising the possibility that you earned a PhD in physics without understanding the very basics?

We are not talking about what happens once one is back in equilibrium. Here is the sequence of events after an imagined instantaneous doubling of CO2:

(1) The amount of radiative forcing is a little over 4 W/m^2. In other words, 4 W/m^2 more are being absorbed by the Earth than emitted.

(2) The stratosphere undergoes relatively rapid adjustment and this imbalance drops a bit to about 3.7 W/m^2. You are correct that for technical reasons, the IPCC chooses to use this “tropopause” value rather than the original value.

(3) Over time (and it takes quite a bit of time!), the temperature rises due to the radiative imbalance until such time as the Earth is again emitting as much as it is absorbing.

Joel D Shore; no single metric is right or wrong
…

or would you prefer something slightly different? trying to keep it to just a few words (which was a bit of a challenge with Dr Shore)

That is a reasonable summary in 10 words or less of what my major point is.

Sorry, Joel, the no-feedback climate sensitivity cannot be measured, nor can it be calculated. It can only be estimated. There is a significant difference..

I will not disagree with you. What you call the “no-feedback” case does have a certain amount of arbitrariness to it. So, maybe a better way to put it is that for the way that climate science has chosen to define the no-feedback case, my discussion explains the correct way to calculate it.

The two paragraphs are separate calculations and issues. (I did mean energy flux.)

The 150 w/m2 was a made up value I used to demonstrate this point. The actual values I have already posted were 324w/m2 and 333 w/m2 for back-ground radiation. This value was never used with SB so not using linear and non-linear calculation together here.

[Taking 2.5% of 33c is therefore only 0.81c of the greenhouse effect

“Again, you are applying a linear calculation to a non-linear function.”

The difference being CO2 is logarithmic so a additional 3.7w/m2 will have less effect than 0.81c for a doubling CO2 on average.]

I agree with applying a linear calculation to a non-linear function here, but it still gives a good estimate. No where near as bad as using SB for doubling of CO2 calculation.

In previous posts covering this topic I have mentioned the logarithmic function before correctly. I have muddle this sentence up and sorry for the confusion.This is what happens sometimes when you rush posts and of course meant there is less effect with an additional 3.7w/m2 because it requires a continuous doubling of CO2 from the previous 3.7w/m2.

“The SB law doesn’t take this into account and can’t calculate how much of a increasing greenhouse gas component contributes to the overall greenhouse effect.”

[Well it does if you apply it correctly. That said, calculating an average T for earth surface and an average P for ghe is a fool’s errand, so there’s no easy way to apply SB Law.]

Using SB the temperature is 279k that a black-body would have, the Earth’s temperature already been shown is about 288k.

Matt G;
Sorry, but you still have multiple issues confused. SB has nothing to do, nothing at all, with calculating the change in w/m2 of doubling of CO2. You arrive at a value for doubling of CO2 in w/m2 first and then as a second step you can calculate the change in T for a given change in w/m2.

You’ve also got the SB temperature of the planet wrong, it is 253K, not 279.

You’ve also misunderstood the reference frame. As seen from space, the temperature of the planet is indeed 253K, a match to SB Law. This is called the effective black body temperature of earth. As seen from space however, we are not seeing a surface. We’re seeing escaping energy flux that may have been radiated from earth surface, from TOA, or anywhere in between. At about 14 km altitude, temps are indeed about 253K. Above, they are colder. Below, they are warmer. (that’s a generalization). At earth surface, they are 33K warmer. The effective average (if you will) from surface to TOA is in fact 253K.

When CO2 doubles, the effective black body temperature of earth stays precisely the same, 253K. What changes (in theory) is the average height at which the effective black body temperature occurs, with temps above being cooler and temps below being higher.

Now I have certain reservations about the theory, and the feedbacks, but discussion of the ghe and any effective criticism of the theory must start with a sound understanding of the theory itself. I suggest you spend some time with first year physics texts. I think Robert G Brown mentioned he has published same on the internet for free.

joeldshore
(2) If you adopt my interpretation, there is no real ambiguity in the statement.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

NASA has had ample time to clarify the statement and any number of NASA researchers have been active in various threads in this forum. To my knowledge, none of them proposed your interpretation. Their defense of the statement in fact was consistent with the most obvious reading of it which richardscourtney has used. If the statement meant as you suggest, it is only logical they would have said so while defending it.

No sorry that’s not what I done, I am comparing a SB calculation with a different way for calculating doubling of CO2. The change in w/m2 has nothing to do with SB as this is a separate calculation entirely.

Temperature of the Earth gives 279k.

Similarly we can calculate the effective temperature of the Earth TE by equating the energy received from the Sun and the energy radiated by the Earth, under the black-body approximation. The amount of power, ES, emitted by the Sun is given by:

E_S = 4\pi r_S^2 \sigma T_S^4

At Earth, this energy is passing through a sphere with a radius of a0, the distance between the Earth and the Sun, and the energy passing through each square metre of the sphere is given by

E_{a_0} = \frac{E_S}{4\pi a_0^2}

The Earth has a radius of rE, and therefore has a cross-section of \pi r_E^2. The amount of solar power absorbed by the Earth is thus given by:

E_{abs} = \pi r_E^2 \times E_{a_0} :

The amount of energy emitted must equal the amount of energy absorbed, and so:

My original post has nothing to do with SB and using only observed w/m2 back ground radiation compared with same component, 3.7w/m2 from a doubling of CO2.

“The 3.7W/m2 is claimed for a doubling of CO2, yet 324 W/m2 is claimed for all greenhouse back radiation. A doubling of CO2 therefore is just 1.1% of the total. If 33c represents the total for greenhouse gases this just represents 0.36c rise per doubling of CO2. This is being generous because most of the warming from greenhouse gases occurs during the first parts with it being logarithmic. This also doesn’t take a water body into account either on the surface.

There is obviously some disagreement here compared with the theoretical 1.2c per doubling CO2. The reason is obviously because this is partly derived from ideas over land not the ocean. The 324 W/m2 claimed for all greenhouse gases doesn’t warm a bucket of water in the shade during one day, so 1.1 percent of this even if atmospheric levels in future were reached are so miniscule. No wonder we can’t measure the difference from zero now with many decades until the possibility for a doubling of CO2 is reached.

Since the 1960′s CO2 levels have raised 80ppm until now so a doubling of CO2 won’t occur until it hits 630ppm. That means we are 25.4% of the target for a doubling of CO2. Therefore CO2 should have since the 1960′s only warmed the planet by 0.09c. The planet since then has risen 0.4c so only 25 percent at the most has come from CO2.

Therefore the Earth’s radiative physics not in a laboratory, shows the basic doubling of CO2 is 0.36c. This is how it should be when claiming a non feedback or not taking into account any feedback”

I am showing overall that the SB law doesn’t agree with the doubling of CO2 using observed back-ground radiation from satellite data.

NASA has had ample time to clarify the statement and any number of NASA researchers have been active in various threads in this forum.

What are you talking about? What NASA researchers involved in that climate report are active here? I am one of the few left around here anymore who is representing the position of the consensus of the scientific community. I thought of proposing that we contact the authors there but I decided against it simply because I am quite confident that it would do no good: Richard and Monckton would just claim that the scientists are altering their criterion in retrospect.

If Richard and Monckton want to resort to this sort of sophistry in support of their arguments, far be it from me to stop them. It just confirms what is already becoming obvious, which is that they are not even attempting to make arguments that actual scientists would find compelling. They know they have lost the scientific argument and are just trying to make arguments to convince those who don’t know enough to see through them.

[And, by the way, I see you have no actual arguments to rebut why Richard and Monckton’s interpretation makes no sense.]

Again I submit that the opinions of one individual that the IPCC has problems is not particularly newsworthy, especially when it involves speculation of how the IPCC will deal with his opinions, assuming they find them worthy of response.

You aren’t aware, or chose to turn a blind eye, to the fact that Annan is one of the top-50 warmist scientists, an IPCC insider, one who has co-authored with lots of other bigshot warmists over the years. He’s not just “one individual.”

And he wasn’t just accusing the IPCC of having a problem. He was also suggesting that they would attempt to brush this problem under the rug, because they would rather obstruct science and facilitate it. IOW< he was accusing them of operating in bad faith. Even Judith Curry, the only previous notable apostate, hasn't gone this far, AFAIK.

I made those two points clear and explicit in my comment, but you've misrepresented them with your strawman. You, too, would rather brush this problem under the rug,

I am replying to your post at February 3, 2013 at 10:48 am.It contains only two comments worthy of response and they are each risible.

To save others going back through the thread, I recap what your comments are about.

You made a comment at February 2, 2013 at 11:18 am and at February 2, 2013 at 12:07 pm I asked you to clarify that comment by asking you

How long does the globe have to experience no discernible warming before you agree that the increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is not causing global warming?

You responded to that at February 2, 2013 at 6:19 pm.

Your response was to evade the question, to falsely claim the “very phrasing biases the question”, and to pose a different question instead. You then pretended the answer to that different question is other than it is.

So, at February 3, 2013 at 3:23 am I replied and my reply included this.

My question was clear, straightforward, unbiased, and simple.
You have not answered it.
Hence, I make the reasonable deduction that
(a) There is no length of time with no discernible global warming that would induce you to reject your notion that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is causing global warming
Or
(b) You don’t know how long such a time would be
Or
(c) You are being deliberately evasive for some unstated reason

Your post that I am answering says

The correct answer is closest to (b). How could I possibly know unless I have actually investigated it, as others such as NOAA have? And, alas, they did not present their results in the way that you want (in terms of the length that the 95%…or whatever…confidence interval of the measured trend includes a trend of zero) because, at best, this would be a very indirect way of looking for incompatibility between the models and the observed trend.

How could you possibly know!? How could you possibly know!?
If you don’t know then how could you possibly make the assertion which my question asked you to clarify. It was

The short answer is that it is “cooling” for the same reason that you can cherry-pick other similar periods between 1975 and now where the slope of the trend is not positive…And, for the same reason, that one can create artificial data that consists of a constant underlying linear increasing trend plus noise and find periods of time where the trend is negative. This simple concept of how trends work in noisy data tends to fool non-scientists, which is why there is such a divide on this issue between what the “skeptic” community thinks and what the scientific community thinks.

You made the assertion that the present period of lack of warming is one of “similar periods between 1975 and now where the slope of the trend is not positive”.

I asked you how long such a period would need to be for it to differ from those periods and so be an indication that CO2-induced global warming was insignificant.

And you now say you don’t know how to determine that.In other words, you now admit you were telling a lie when you made the assertion I asked you to clarify because you now admit you don’t know and you don’t know how to know!

Not content with that, you again attempt to misrepresent the NOAA falsification criterion for climate models. The recent period of more than 15 years of (at 95% confidence) no global warming falsifies the models according to that criterion (which I quote verbatim at February 3, 2013 at 3:23 am).

You again attempt to justify your daft assertion that the NOAA falsification criterion means other than it says. You know how ridiculous that assertion is because you made a complete fool of yourself in the previous thread where you tried to misrepresent the clear and unambiguous words of that criterion.

Joel, at this point the only reasonable thing for you to do is to recover some credibility by apologising.

But they didn’t. End of story. It’s not a question of what you think is logical for them to have said, it’s a question of what they said. If you think of all the other grammatically correct places in that sentence they could have put the parenthetical phrase, nowhere but where they put it could it apply to zero trends AND ONLY zero trends.

It was not until you challenged me to find the best way for them to have said what you wanted them to say that I fully realised how clearly and concisely they had written what they’d written. They could possibly (though I’m not exactly sure how) have written it in such a way that even you would fail to come up with a misinterpretation such as you have; but it would certainly have been far less concise…and completely unnecessary. It says what it says.

You again attempt to justify your daft assertion that the NOAA falsification criterion means other than it says. You know how ridiculous that assertion is because you made a complete fool of yourself in the previous thread where you tried to misrepresent the clear and unambiguous words of that criterion

What does “The simulations (at the 95% level)” mean? That phrase has no meaning to me so why on Earth would that be what they would have said if they had wanted to say what I “wanted them to say” (which is Graham-speak for what they actually did say). The rational way for them to say what they said is the way that they said it: They put the modifying phrase in parentheses immediately after what it modifies, which is “rule out”.

The black body of planet Earth is 279k, albedo of planet earth is 0.3, so 279k becomes 255k with a guess (approximation reduces the temperature by a factor of 0.7^1/4). It is no longer a black body any more and then greenhouse gases supposedly make up the rest to 288k. The science behind this is flimsy to say the least and is all guess work. The SB doesn’t count for greenhouse gases or albedo and the correct value is 279k.

Our posts crossed.
Your post at February 3, 2013 at 12:46 pm is an outrage.

Why did you NOT quote NOAA falsification criterion when YOU brought it up if you think your ridiculous misinterpretation of it makes sense?My response was to quote it verbatim because it is the clear and unambiguous.

And you have the brass neck to accuse me of sophistry!

And you say you did not query the authors of the NOAA report because you say Monckton and I would distort their answer! How dare you?! You have neither ability nor right to proclaim what you think he or I would do in some hypothetical situation which you don’t dare to create.
Apologise for that.

The reality is that YOU and ONLY YOU are trying to misrepresent what that clear statement says.

Graham W states the simple truth of the matter in his post at February 3, 2013 at 1:56 pm.

Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

I don’t put any interpretation on those sentences. I quote them. You are trying to say they mean other than they say.

I love it when arguments like this get trotted out. Do you have ANY idea Mr I Can’t Think For Myself So You Shouldn’t Either how many scientists have been active in this thread? I count at least a 1/2 dozen PhD’s in the hard sciences from memory alone, and that’s only the ones I KNOW and that’s just THIS thread. It is one thing to be an ignoramus, another entirely to insist that the rest of us should be too.

Run along little troll. Don’t spend too much of your brain power arguing here, you need some left over to remember to breath and you clearly don’t have a surplus.

Joel
Jan P Perlwitz of NASA was rather active here for a while, and on that topic. He got spanked. He didn’t bring up the argument that you have. I don’t know that he was directly involved with the paper, but he was certsainly conversant with it and is colleagues with people who were involved. He wasn’t the only one, he’s just a name I recall.

matt g
324 W/m2 is claimed for all greenhouse back radiation.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

No it isn’t, neither warmists nor skeptics make such a claim, your math is impossible to follow and you’ve contradicted what you yourself said. There’s no point trying to help you. You clearly don’t want to understand, and hence you shall not.

I draw your attention to the comment of Joel Shore at February 3, 2013 at 2:10 pm.

For those of you not familiar with the other thread, this is funny. But Shore has had the matter explained to him countless times so it is also sad.

Of the sentences from NOAA which are

Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

Joel Shore in his post says

They put the modifying phrase in parentheses immediately after what it modifies, which is “rule out”.

Got that? According to Shore “(at the 95% level)” applies to “rule out” and does not apply to “zero trends”.

Now think about this.
1.
Trends always have a confidence level (or they are meaningless) but Shore says NOAA did not apply a confidence level to “zero trends” although they wrote “(at the 95% level) zero trends”.
2.
Shore says “(at the 95% level)” applies to “The simulations rule out”.

But “rule out” means ‘does not permit’.
“The simulations rule out” can only mean absolute certainty of 100% that it does not happen in the simulations. However, 95% confidence means something happens one in twenty times. Anything that happens that often is not “ruled out” by the simulations: the simulations say it happens one in twenty times.

And why does Shore assert that the sentence says other than it does?
Because the sentence says,
“The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
And that discrepancy exists because (at the 95% level) a zero trend has existed for more than 15 years.

The forcing at the tropopause is meaningless anyway since 72% of it is not showing up anyway.

72% is missing or has merely been emitted back to space just as fast as it is accumulating/occurring. Net forcing is 1.7 W/m2 right now but only about 0.5 W/m2 is accumulating/occurring.

What could possibly go wrong that? Well, climate science did not take into account the fact that energy emission from the Earth will increase in proportion to the amount of extra energy that is accumulating/occurring.

Basically, heat something up, and its emissions increase according to the Stephan-Boltzmann equations. A simple mistake in the theory, among others.

matt g;
That was the first value brought out ( Kiehl & Trenberth, 1997.), the recent update brings this value to 333 w/m2.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In that diagram “back radiation” refers to downward LW from all input sources to the atmosphere. they are all on the diagram. The inputs are 78 (direct transmission from sun), 17 (thermals), 80 (latent heat) and 356 (absorption of LW from earth). Since you insist on applying a % to attribute to ghe, you are applying it to an output that has inputs that are not related to ghe (and doing so is still a linear calculation of a non-linear function). So your math is wrong and the number you are calculating against is also wrong. If you want to insist that your math is right, you’ll need to subtract the amount of the 333 shown on that diagram that is a consequence of the other inputs to arrive at a base number to calculate against.

You may want to notice that direct inputs are 161 +78 = 239. Outputs are 169 +30 +40 = 239.

Joel: You know how to read. Please stop pretending you don’t, to support your argument. When reading, you read an entire sentence to determine its meaning. If you do so, you’ll realise that what I was suggesting as an example of how they could have phrased their criterion to mean what you wanted it to mean, makes perfect sense. It is a grammatically correct way for them to have expressed what you seem to wish they had expressed (only they didn’t write it).

You know that this is true, because I know you can read. This is evidenced by the fact that you respond to people when they address you with the written word. Hence you know that I’m right in what I’m saying, and your continued attempts to somehow escape from this situation are making you seem dishonest.

What could possibly go wrong that? Well, climate science did not take into account the fact that energy emission from the Earth will increase in proportion to the amount of extra energy that is accumulating/occurring.

Basically, heat something up, and its emissions increase according to the Stephan-Boltzmann equations. A simple mistake in the theory, among others.

Can, I ask you, how do you think they calculate how much the planet will heat up in response to a forcing if they don’t take into account that its emissions will increase as it heats up? In that case, what would stop it from just heating up forever?

And you say you did not query the authors of the NOAA report because you say Monckton and I would distort their answer! How dare you?! You have neither ability nor right to proclaim what you think he or I would do in some hypothetical situation which you don’t dare to create.
Apologise for that.

What I said was: “Richard and Monckton would just claim that the scientists are altering their criterion in retrospect.” If you agree that we can ask the authors what they meant and if they say that they meant what I said then you would respect that and no longer make your false claims about what they said, then by all means, I would be most happy to give you an obsequious apology!! [But, I’m not holding my breath!]

Trends always have a confidence level (or they are meaningless) but Shore says NOAA did not apply a confidence level to “zero trends” although they wrote “(at the 95% level) zero trends”.

(1) No they wrote “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more”. Just quoting part of it is just sophistry on your part.

(2) They are not meaningless. The actual realization of the global temperature has a certain trend. The 95% confidence interval gives us some idea of what sort of underlying trend that is given that the actual trend has both signal and noise. However, that does not mean that we cannot say what the actual trend is anymore than it is “meaningless” for me to say that I flipped a coin 10 times and got 7 heads.

But “rule out” means ‘does not permit’.
“The simulations rule out” can only mean absolute certainty of 100% that it does not happen in the simulations. However, 95% confidence means something happens one in twenty times. Anything that happens that often is not “ruled out” by the simulations: the simulations say it happens one in twenty times.

(1) As in “When the black line descends below the red horizontal line at 1.0 on the vertical axis, people sometimes say that the Higgs Boson has been ruled out at 95% confidence level at this mass”? ( http://blog.vixra.org/2011/12/13/the-higgs-boson-live-from-cern/ ) Or, are you talking about a different “rule(d) out”?

(2) Do you care to enlighten us as to how the authors of the paper were able to state something that is inherently statistical with 100% certainty?

Joel Shore (with increasing desperation) tries to pretend that sentences can’t be constructed like the example I showed him.

The question is not whether they can be constructed in this way. The question is whether climate scientists are required to put parenthetical expressions before what they modify because if they put them after what they modify, people are free to misinterpret them as modifying the things AFTER the parenthetical expression if it best suits their purposes.

This just shows what scientists are up against when people are actively trying to misinterpret and distort what they have said. It is rather comical.

Inger E (norah4you)
That is the period after we humans started to use aerosoler effecting the Ozone layer. At first the ‘hole’ got wider and then after global forbidding of usage they are growing towards ‘normal’.

Thanks HenryP,
guess you haven’t been told that I have had access to correct temperatures and levels almost all my 63 year old life….. I grow up with them due to my father’s work. He was one of the four first to work full time with problems in water and air, chemical biological as well as temperature related problems(from 1954). I participated myself from I was 9 years old up to mid 1970’s as my father’s assistant in studies he made on spare time, for that’s what it took, in order to establish what then was called water and air quality as well as pollution. In order to do that temperature (on ground level, 1 m and 3 meter up as well on when ground was water up and down) had to be correct measured. Not only that the Ph-levels in all water had to be written down on all biological as well as chemical samples at samplings.

All samples for southern Sweden were analysed at a laboratory in Norrköping. Since the studies started before Sweden had an official laboratory to perform the quality tests and analysis, the laboratory was a private one. Anyhow, back 1995 I was asked to convey the results my father and other persons had from 1957 up to mid 1980’s to those so called experts who were to study on University level among other things such questions we are discussing. Correct figures as well as analysereports. I say so called experts. I don’t give a dime nor a nickel for those here. Reason? I was told that it was easier (?) calculating using interpolation and/or other methods than using correct figures…….. If you start with non-correct figures the results aren’t correct.

For oxon-hole problematic my father rised the question I am trying to explain why it’s necessary to look closer at the outflow from Earth after 1992-94. My father and others dicussed the question back in 74/75. Long before the problem was on the agenda around the world. A few years later I organized a weekend-conferenze in subject ‘Humanecology’ in Denmark. (I had participated in bring Humanecology to Sweden and introducing it as a subject for higher studies). Ph.Lic Björn Gillberg, a wellknown Swedish Environmental debater, was one of the lecturer. He and I had a long discussion over the problematic to establish if the expected changes in temperature on Earth due to different types of polution as well the changes in CO2 that Svante Arrhenius had calculated as a natural changes to be.
Thus I had to go back studying:
Arrhenius Svante, Naturens värmehushållning : Föredrag, Stockholm Norstedts 1896
Arrhenius Svante, Les atmosphères des planèts. : Conférence faite le 8 mars 1911.; Paris 1911
Arrhenius Svante, Klimatets växlingar i historisk tid, Stockholm 1915
Arrhenius Svante, Uber den Einfluss des atmosphärischen Kohlensäure-gehalts auf die Temperatur der Erdoberfläche. Stockholm, 1896. Bihang till K. Sv.Vet. akad. handl. Bd. 22: Afd.1: no 1.
Arrhenius Svante, Uber die Wärmaebsorption durch Kohlensäuer und ihren Einfluss auf die Temperatur der Erdoberfläche. Stockholm 1901 Vet. Akad. K. Sv., Öfversigt af förhandlingar. 58(1901): No 1: [4].

For me as a Systemprogrammer (my first exam) who studied Mathematic and Mathematical Statistic that was essential information to learn by heart and also analysing. At that time I was active Liberal.
When my best friend from High School started studying at Chalmers (he became Ph.D Theoretical Physic) I borrowed all books I could. One of my problems always been that I have a hunger to learn in order to understand. Thus I also had and still have the opportunity to discuss what I learnt so I don’t misinterpret or do other mistakes. One of my favorite during later years is String theory. I am not comfortable with Edward Witten’s Second Super String theory. When “placing” the types (I, IIA, IIB, HO och HE) together I feel it’s being squished in same way that some young girls are said to force their fot into to small shoes. Somethings missing and that something I spend some of my time resting (due to ache – artros) trying to find.

You and everyone else almost on a daily level use search programs which still have the same base as I wrote when I sold the first search program back in 1980. Only sold it for usage in Libraries and for such types of searching. Got very well paid back then.

If you can understand that lesson you are OK and you are on your way……the warming effect by GHG’s is caused by a slowing in cooling down.

My actual analysis of the results of 47 weather stations showed an increasing trend in the speed of warming of maxima, pushing up the mean. average temperature. The ratio maxima : means: mminima was 7:3:1. So, this first finding was exactly the opposite of what I had expected to find if there were case to be made for man made global warming (AGW).
I subsequently determined the speed of warming in degrees C or K/ annum versus time. And that is where this graph comes from.http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/

I give myself a few years error either way, but, looking at energy-in (MAXIMA), my results seem to suggest that
1) global warming started around 1951 (when ozone started decreasing, both NH and SH)
2) global cooling started in 1995 (when ozone started increasing again, both NH and SH)
If we add 44 years to the 1994 we are in 2039 to observe the end of cooling.
But like I said, there could a few years error there.

Now, Trenberth (you will find out that we refer a lot to this guy) determined that of all that is being back radiated (back radiation to space =cooling), ozone accounts for about 25%. However, I think he forgot that not only ozone is manufactured from the sun’s E-UV but also a number of other HxOx and NOx compounds as well, and….. I suspect that they also back radiate, if there is more……

So, in conclusion, I think I have found a neat explanation for the 88 Gleissberg solar/weather cycle, namely it is the opening and closing of the ozone & others’ hole every 44 years so we always have 44 years of warming and 44 years of cooling – looking at energy-in. Remember energy-in is not exactly the same as energy-out =earth average temp. There maybe some plus or – minus lags, depending on quite a number of “earthly” factors.
So, it seems to me the idea that it was the CFC’s (or aerosols) destroying the ozone layer was also a red herring or it is an effect that is so small that it is probably completely inconsequential on the grand scale of earth’s climate. I found the same with the increase in carbon dioxide.
There really is little or no AGW …

Joel: What’s comical to everyone else is the way you keep trying to wriggle out of it. There is nowhere else for them to put that bracketed phrase, in that sentence, for it to apply to zero trends and only zero trends. It’s also (though this isn’t necessary to understand to be sure of how to read the sentence) more logical for the bracketed phrase to apply to the “zero trends” since “95% levels” are most typically associated with trends rather than numbers of times simulations come up with certain results.

It’s clear from the correct and only interpretation of the statement that 15-year or more periods of zero trends at the 95% level didn’t happen in the simulations.

They put the modifying phrase in parentheses immediately after what it modifies, which is “rule out”.

Please note this, Shore, YOU WROTE THAT, NOT ME.

At February 3, 2013 at 3:35 pm, I wrote to you and I quoted your words verbatim: I explained how and why those words from you are nonsensical. Your words which I quoted verbatim were

They put the modifying phrase in parentheses immediately after what it modifies, which is “rule out”.

I repeat, those are YOUR WORDS, SHORE, quoted verbatim.

And I continued saying

Got that? According to Shore “(at the 95% level)” applies to “rule out” and does not apply to “zero trends”.

Now think about this.
1.
Trends always have a confidence level (or they are meaningless) but Shore says NOAA did not apply a confidence level to “zero trends” although they wrote “(at the 95% level) zero trends”.
2.
Shore says “(at the 95% level)” applies to “The simulations rule out”.

But at February 3, 2013 at 8:11 pm you have replied saying

Trends always have a confidence level (or they are meaningless) but Shore says NOAA did not apply a confidence level to “zero trends” although they wrote “(at the 95% level) zero trends”.

(1) No they wrote “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more”. Just quoting part of it is just sophistry on your part.

The words I addressed are YOURS which I quoted verbatim.
THE “SOPHISTRY” IS YOURS, NOT MINE!

Furthermore, you complain, “Just quoting part of it is just sophistry on your part” when YOU have only quoted “part of it”. In my post of which you say that, I quoted the entire sentence and explained why you don’t like it where I said

And why does Shore assert that the sentence says other than it does?
Because the sentence says,

The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

And that discrepancy exists because (at the 95% level) a zero trend has existed for more than 15 years.

You are desperately trying to talk about anything except that discrepancy.

Shore, you are making as big a fool of yourself on this thread as you did on the other one.

You can continue to try to pretend the NOAA criterion says other than it does. But your irrational ravings are getting you nowhere.

You have now reached the stage of calling your own words “sophistry” and pretending they were said by somebody else. It is time for you to stop.

joeldshore says:
February 3, 2013 at 5:58 pm
Can, I ask you, how do you think they calculate how much the planet will heat up in response to a forcing if they don’t take into account that its emissions will increase as it heats up? In that case, what would stop it from just heating up forever?
————————————————

As far as I can tell, the only climate scientist who has ever talked about it is Trenberth who fixed the IPCC forcing chart for them by including a massive negative radiative feedback term in it (bigger than the positive feedbacks). He called it mysterious (the net imbalance term at the bottom is now 0.5 W/m2.

And then Church and White go through it here except they still find half of the energy still missing as a residua here. (I note Skeptical Science and Nuccitelli 2012 may great hay out of distorting what this paper was talking about).

And I keep their main chart, up-to-date here since pro-AGW people can only focus on the tiny energy accumulating and forget that 72% of it is actually missing/merely being emitted back to space at a faster rate than expected.

I’m just saying, maybe the science needs to start talking about increased OLR to space and/or start recognizing that it is much bigger than historically assumed in the theory (as silent as the theory is about the issue in public).

thank you for raising the issue of averaging anomalies from very cold regimes with anomalies from very warm regimes – something that I have always found a bit bizarre. The other thing that amazes me is that a change in the mean can be caused by a number of differing factors – rising/falling highs, rising/falling lows both diurnally and seasonally. Is this how science is done?

There is nowhere else for them to put that bracketed phrase, in that sentence, for it to apply to zero trends and only zero trends.

Putting it after “zero trends” rather than after “rule out” would be a start. Would it still be a little ambiguous? Yeah…but at least you would have an argument that they put it in a place where it is reasonable to read it as applying to zero trends. However, if they wanted to say what you think they wanted to say, what they should do is write a sentence like this: “The simulations rule out trends that are statistically-indistinguishable from zero at the 95% confidence level for 15 years or more.”

Furthermore, they should have actually added enough discussion so that one could plausibly understand how they got from what they described doing to their conclusion. (Right now, the discussion makes it quite clear how they got from what they describe to what I believe their conclusion to be but it is completely unclear how they got from what they describe to what you and Richard believe their conclusion to be. In fact, neither of you has even been able to come up with any sort of plausible argument for this.)

It’s also (though this isn’t necessary to understand to be sure of how to read the sentence) more logical for the bracketed phrase to apply to the “zero trends” since “95% levels” are most typically associated with trends rather than numbers of times simulations come up with certain results.

This is just idle assertion on your part…and an extremely incorrect assertion at that. A standard way that statistics is used to test a theory is to say, “Given the result that I have obtained, what is the probability that I could have gotten this result if Theory X were true?” That is done by computing the distribution of results you get if Theory X were true and comparing the result that you did get to that distribution in order to see how compatible or incompatible that result is with the theory.

As far as I can tell, the only climate scientist who has ever talked about it is Trenberth who fixed the IPCC forcing chart for them by including a massive negative radiative feedback term in it (bigger than the positive feedbacks).

The Planck response is ALWAYS considered. If it weren’t, the answer to the question of climate sensitivity would be easy: the no-feedback sensitivity is infinite; if the net feedbacks are negative then you get a finite response and if they are positive, you got a runaway.

In most cases, climate scientists don’t call the Planck response a feedback because it is considered in the zeroth-order calculation, that is, they use it to compute the no-feedback sensitivity. However, a few consider it as a negative feedback, such as Dennis Hartmann in this book “Global Physical Climatology”. (And, under that interpretation, the argument is no longer whether net feedbacks are negative or positive…Everyone agrees that they are negative, but rather whether the net feedbacks are more negative or less negative than the Planck feedback alone.) Either way of doing things, of course, gives the same result.

The claim that climate scientists are not considering this is about the most bizarre statement I have ever seen from someone who claims to be at all conversant in the science.

Jan P Perlwitz of NASA was rather active here for a while, and on that topic. He got spanked. He didn’t bring up the argument that you have. I don’t know that he was directly involved with the paper, but he was certsainly conversant with it and is colleagues with people who were involved. He wasn’t the only one, he’s just a name I recall.

You made an error, which I unfortunately did not notice and thus repeated myself in responding to you, in conflating NASA and NOAA. The climate report is from NOAA, not NASA. Completely different federal agencies.

Regardless, I find it strange that you expect that someone who has occasionally participated here is obliged to find, among the thousands of threads here, all errors that are made that have some relation to the agency that he works for (if it were true that he did work for NOAA, which he doesn’t) and hence that you are entitled to assume that if he hasn’t corrected something that appeared in a thread that, to my knowledge, he never even participated in, then you are entitled to assume that the claims made in that thread are correct.

I like Annan’s post, and the comments. He’s great at hedging his language. Some alarmist readers take the tact that skeptics assume that Annan is saying that CS is likely less than 2C when he is saying that CS less than 2C is more likely than CS greater than 4.5C. He’s basically saying that the low CS tail is the fat tail and the high CS tail is much thinner than though when the original CS range was given.

In a follow-up comment, he throws them a bone, saying the 3C expected CS is still perfectly reasonable. He continues on saying that at the time of the original range he set (before all the evidence that the high CS are much less likely), he gave 3C as the central value, but even at that time 2.5C would have been a better central value. 3C was chosen to be politically fashionable.

“Yeah, I should probably have had a tl;dr version, which is that sensitivity is still about 3C.

The discerning reader will already have noted that my previous posts on the matter actually point to a value more likely on the low side of this rather than higher, and were I pressed for a more precise value, 2.5 might have been a better choice even then. But I’d rather be a little conservative than risk being too Pollyanna-ish about it.”

Dolphinhead says
The other thing that amazes me is that a change in the mean can be caused by a number of differing factors – rising/falling highs, rising/falling lows both diurnally and seasonally. Is this how science is done?

Henry says
I am not a climate scientist
but I know something about stats and I figured out a few things while investigating climate science. If you are taking a sample of weather stations to tell you something about global trends:
1) make sure your sample is balanced by latitude
2) make sure your sample is balanced by 70/30 @sea /inland
3) you need a sample of at least 40-50 weather stations to give you a reasonable global result
4) avoid anglo saxon weather stations – they exhibit clear fiddling around and ‘re-adjusting” – like the station in Gibraltar that showed no correlation whatsoever with surrounding Spanish stations…
5) longitude does not matter because a) earth turns every 24 hours and b) if you are looking at average yearly maxima, means and minima, the seasonal variation in earth’s position versus the sun is also cancelled out.
6)Avoid weather stations with many missing data. It does not affect the randomness of your sample.
7) if you have a few gaps in the results from weather stations, don’t put in long term averages – which is the normal practice in stats. For example, if you have one particular month missing, from a particular weather station, say November 2005, rather look at the results for November for 2004 and November 2006 and take the average. Fill this in for November 2005. It looks like a simple thing, but if you are looking at temperature trends over time this type of detail is actually quite critical.

As I noted at Bishop Hill, it is worse than we thought….. Annan doesn’t only say a prominent climate scientist admitted to such deceit…. In a previous comment in 2010, Annan was a bit more specific that the person so proud to lie for such ‘expert’ surveys had in fact ‘openly advocated’ such behavior among climate scientists, i.e., had sought to persuade fellow scientists to do the same in order to ‘encourage action’…. such talk at a climate science conference is more than one more person’s admission of ‘Gleickian ethics’ …. AND Annan mentioned that said person is one of the Zickfeld 14:

DC,
Well talking of AR5, the two CLAs plus two more authors on the most relevant chapter (long term climate change) are in this set of 14 – and none of them are the sane #4…(ok I accept several of the other pdfs are not really too ridiculous either).

Incidentally one participant in this new work is the person I think I mentioned some time ago who openly advocated exaggerating in opinion polls such as this in order to encourage “action”.

….and then Annan also said this in the same comment thread:
[emphasis added]

James Annan 2/7/10 7:22 am

It’s the very high probabilities for high sensitivity that I object to – there really is no evidence at all for this, and lots against, once you realise that the widespread praxis of “take a uniform prior and ignore almost all the data” is pathological and guarantees a long fat tail irrespective of what the observations are.

[It’s not as if there isn’t a mountain of evidence positively pointing to ~3C either.]

So yes, Annan thinks the evidence is strong for around 3C of sensitivity, which will seem high to many here, BUT Annan also thinks there is overt deception going on in at least some claims for higher than 3C sensitivity, and knows it from personal testimony from one of the Zickfeld 14.

Not such a good statement for the integrity of Climate Scientists…. (did anyone object to the proposal to lie on such expert surveys?? Annan surely would have mentioned it if such a proposal had been vigorously denounced by others present)

aaron says
The discerning reader will already have noted that my previous posts on the matter actually point to a value more likely on the low side of this rather than higher, and were I pressed for a more precise value, 2.5 might have been a better choice even then. But I’d rather be a little conservative than risk being too Pollyanna-ish about it.
henry says\
I hope the discerning reader will have figured out by now that the value is close to zero.
The net effect of the Gleissberg solar/weather cycle over 88 years is also zero, you know….http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Go figure.

Others, like Trenberth, have to tried to look directly at the incoming and outgoing radiation, but as he has noted, we can’t yet measure these precisely enough to directly measure the radiative imbalance.

We will never be able to measure these precisely enough to measure a radiative imbalance, because there isn’t any to measure, or if you prefer, signal to noise is maybe one part in a billion or even less. ,The Earth is an open thermodynamic system in quasi-equilibrium. On a daily basis inputs almost exactly equal outputs. If you take one whole degree C, spread out over a century (which is fermi estimate order of magnitude the rate of past and current warming), that is 0.1 C/decade, 0.01 C/year, 0.00003 C/day, C/second, and spectroscopy measures intensity on a granularity of perhaps milliseconds. So I’m wrong, not one part in a billion, less than one part in a trillion, and you’d have to measure it over the entire surface of the Earth to obtain the integrated, full spectrum power based on a full-surface signal at this precision.

So if Trenberth has actually tried to look at incoming versus outgoing radiation to detect radiative imbalance then he’s an idiot who cannot do elementary arithmetic, because he might as well be trying to detect solar tidal forces acting on a thumbtack using his bathroom scale.

What can and has been done is the stuff in Petty’s book. TOA and BOA IR spectra (for the same location and same time) are compared — in the spectra one can clearly see the holes left by greenhouse gases at the TOA looking down, and at the BOA looking up you can equally clearly see the radiation in the spectral holes being scattered/reflected back down towards the ground. The GHE can then be inferred from a fairly complicated analysis of incoming radiation from the sun at the BOA (at a relatively high temperature, largely missing the GHG holes) being absorbed, heating the surface, which radiates according to SB proportional to , which in some spectral windows goes straight out to space without passing go, in others is absorbed by the optically opaque GHGs so that some of it is scattered back to the ground to act as further “gain” while the rest diffuses out (remaining in local thermal equilibrium with the atmosphere) to be lost from the upper troposphere at a much colder effective temperature than the ground.

The ground is always chasing a shifting dynamic local “equilibrium” where warming and cooling by all channels balances. Radiation comes in, radiation goes out. Warm air flows in, cold air flows in. It rains, it doesn’t rain. On a second by second basis every square centimeter of surface is either receiving a bit more energy than it is losing or vice versa. The entire Earth itself is the only thermometer sensitive enough to measure the change in this, and then only when averaged over space and time on a decadal timescale, maybe. Even on a decadal timescale, even on a century timescale, the signal to noise problem remains. What part is natural variation? What part is a warming signal, but due to macroscopic processes known or unknown, such as variations and phase changes in the decadal oscillations, or the effects of volcanoes, or the variations in atmospheric ionic chemistry due to radiation modulation by the sun, or the variations due to orbital resonance and axial tilt or complex chaotic oceanic feedback loops with thousand year loop times?

The best that can be said is that we can reasonably expect roughly 1 C warming per doubling of CO_2 gas concentration in our atmosphere, an amount that can easily be overwhelmed by the clearly observable noise in the climate system in either direction, or either augmented or cancelled by feedbacks within the system.

IMO, the knee jerk assumption of net feedback for any quasi-stable system is negative. Otherwise the system would exhibit instability in its short term pattern of fluctuations and would be likely to shift, if possible, into a new state where it is negative. The Earth’s climate system is at least bistable, but there is little evidence for tristability with a far warmer stable phase over the entire Pliestocene, and there is good reason to believe that there is no third still warmer locally stable phase possible given the current configuration of the continents, the dynamic oceanic and atmospheric oscillations, and the Earth’s orbital parameters. The fact that the climate sensitivity (basically the feedback response) is plummeting as the current no-warming trend extends and sets fairly strict probable upper bounds on it is further direct evidence for this, although it is not yet conclusive as we don’t have enough decades of good data upon which to base any sound scientific conclusion as to the probable future evolution of the climate beyond the physics-supported null hypothesis.

What would that be? A probable 1 to 1.5 C total warming upon a doubling of CO_2 all things being equal, where we acknowledge that we do not know the climate sensitivity and expect to measure it over the next fifty years of good, satellite supported and ARGO supported observations. So we assume no feedback at all, either sign until we have far more knowledge than we do at this time.

After all, we don’t know whether or not even that “expected warming” will be canceled by even larger natural variations in e.g. albedo, or orbital factors, or solar factors, or other atmospheric chemistry factors. Or augmented. Or augmented by some, diminished by others. The Earth is capable of 8 to 10 C natural variations of temperature as it moves between at least two currently dominant phases in a hysteretic bistable loop, with natural variation of 2-3 C (easily) on a fluctuation timescale of decades to centuries within the locally stable phases themselves. The entire warming post LIA, including “anthropogenic” warming, is only roughly 1/4 to 1/3 the warm phase range of the Holocene, and leaves us solidly on the cold side of the mean Holocene temperature.

The null hypothesis is that we could therefore actually make it over the halfway point towards the warmer side of the temperatures that have dominated the planet for the last 11,000 years, perhaps taking us safely away from the 11,000 year minimum temperatures that the LIA represented, (tied with) the coldest eras of the entire interglacial post the Younger Dryas. Given a reasonable upper bound for the possible — not proven — value of the senstivity we might make it into the upper third of that range. Given a reasonable lower bound, we could still make it to the end of the century no warmer than or even cooler than it is today. And long before the end of the century, the human contribution to CO_2 levels in the atmosphere — levels that are highly debatable, as it is not at all clear that the Bern model is correct — will have substantially diminished, not because of “carbon futures” but because we will have worked out better ways of fueling civilization than burning chemically valuable and comparatively expensive hydrocarbons. LFTR, maybe fusion, solar photovoltaic, maybe something we cannot now imagine or anticipate.

joeldshore;
You made an error, which I unfortunately did not notice and thus repeated myself in responding to you, in conflating NASA and NOAA. The climate report is from NOAA, not NASA. Completely different federal agencies.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Well if you want to get technical about it, he works for NASA/GISS, is deeply involved with climate modeling, and what I said was that if he wasn’t directly involved he was certainly conversant with the material and could easily have reached out to his colleagues for clarification.

You continue to nit pick rather irrelevant details, and the sentence says what it says, rather plainly in fact.

I have found it hilarious reading Phillip’s and Joel’s attempts at damage control. Do they really believe anyone is going to accept their silly redefinitions?

First of all the context of Annan’s statements was clear when he stated “the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted”. He clearly is stating ne believes the sensitivity is lower than previously thought. Add that to his reference to “lies” and there can be no doubt what he meant. The idea that Joel and Phillip think they can redefine what is all to obvious is an example of their own bias. Why would he make these statements at all if his opinion hasn’t changed? Good grief, are you two complete morons?

It appears these guys cannot accept they may have been wrong. Their self esteem is in disarray. It is very telling from a psychological point of view. They are in full panic mode.

davidmhoffer: At -40, the upward flux from earth surface is about 167 w/m2
At +40, the upward flux from earth surface is about 544 w/m2

So, doubling of CO2 in cold regions/seasons can’t possibly have the same effect in w/m2 as it does in warm regions/seasons because there is a completely different amount of upward flux to work with. But wait.

In the tropics, at sea level, water vapour is as much as 40,000 ppm. In temperate zones less on average and in winter even less and in arctic zones even less and in deserts also less. Water vapour is also a ghg which has an absorption spectrum that overlaps with CO2 (I bet you knew that ;-) ) But ghg’s don’t work just one way. Since the bulk of the CO2 in the atmosphere is ABOVE the layer that has the bulk of the water vapour, downward LW generated by CO2 is in part absorbed and re-radiated back up by the water vapour close to earth surface.

Like you, I have tried to make the claim that changing CO2 and changing temps alter the heat fluxes differently from the way they have been modeled. Do you have references for the assertions above? I would appreciate it if you could supply them.

Indeed, which makes it rather bizarre that Richard Courtney and Monckton and Graham and now unfortunately you are insisting on a convoluted interpretation that your can’t even rationally justify whereby a parenthetical expression modifies what comes after it rather than what comes before it. Such is the power to believe what one wants to believe.

Richard M: I presented evidence that what Annan stated in terms of climate sensitivity in early 2006 aligns extremely closely with what he is stating now. If you have evidence to the contrary, perhaps you can present it rather than just insisting that his views have obviously radically changed without providing any quantitative statement of what the shift in his belief has been. I would say that, at most, in the intervening 7 years, he seems to have become slightly more sure of what he had already stated in regards to the unlikeliness of very high (>4.5 C) climate sensitivity in 2006…and maybe a belief that the most likely climate sensitivity is about 2.5 to 3 C rather than simply 3 C, but that is hardly the big shift that this post seems to imply.

Thanks HenryP,
guess you haven’t been told that I have had access to correct temperatures and levels almost all my 63 year old life…..
Thus I had to go back studying:Arrhenius Svante,

Henry says
Don’t worry, you are not that many years older than me….. What is important for you (and all here) is to realize that he did not see the spectrum of the whole molecule. So I have been asking ever since (as a true skeptic) : show me the balance sheet?

rgbatduke: ,The Earth is an open thermodynamic system in quasi-equilibrium. On a daily basis inputs almost exactly equal outputs.

The whole post was good, but I have a question about terminology. What you call “quasi-equilibrium” I would call “quasi-steady state” or “approximate steady state”: in each volume element of the climate system, the energy in is approximately equal to the energy out during periods (possibly indeterminate) when there is no net imbalance in the whole system (maybe now?) Are equilibrium and steady-state generally used interchangeably?

“Putting it after “zero trends” rather than after “rule out” would be a start.”

No, because that would be ambiguous – whereas where it is in the sentence now is not ambiguous.

Then he says:

“Would it still be a little ambiguous? Yeah…but at least you would have an argument that they put it in a place where it is reasonable to read it as applying to zero trends.”

Good, so you accept that it would be ambiguous to put it there, like I said. As for the rest of what you say here, actually I do have an argument it’s in a reasonable place…since it’s in the only place it could possibly be to apply specifically to zero trends. Can’t get a better argument than that, in fact. Try putting it anywhere else in the sentence…you can’t, as you’ve already admitted above. It’s ambiguous wherever else you put it. It’s not ambiguous where they’ve put it. QED. Bingo. Bish bash bosh. Done.

“However, if they wanted to say what you think they wanted to say, what they should do is write a sentence like this: “The simulations rule out trends that are statistically-indistinguishable from zero at the 95% confidence level for 15 years or more.””

No they wouldn’t, because that statement is still ambiguous. The 95% confidence level, in your example, could still apply to “the simulations…” or to “…trends that are statistically-indistinguishable from zero…”

“Furthermore, they should have actually added enough discussion so that one could plausibly understand how they got from what they described doing to their conclusion. (Right now, the discussion makes it quite clear how they got from what they describe to what I believe their conclusion to be but it is completely unclear how they got from what they describe to what you and Richard believe their conclusion to be. In fact, neither of you has even been able to come up with any sort of plausible argument for this.)”

They ran the simulations. Near zero or negative trends occurred due to the internal climate variability in the models for periods of ten years. Such trends did not occur for periods of 15 years or over. Ever. Boom. Simple.

That post was your response to my having pointed out that your own words were – you asserted – “sophistry”.

I am enjoying your clowning, so I will invite you to explain your assertions.
Please remember that this dialogue began by your making a ridiculous assertion and I obtained your admission that your assertion was false because you did not know it was true and don’t know how to know if it is true.

Please explain
1. What bluff have I made?
2. What are your “substantive points”?
3. What points have you made which I have failed to demonstrate are plain wrong?

If you take one whole degree C, spread out over a century (which is fermi estimate order of magnitude the rate of past and current warming), that is 0.1 C/decade, 0.01 C/year, 0.00003 C/day, 3 \times 10^{-10} C/second, and spectroscopy measures intensity on a granularity of perhaps milliseconds. So I’m wrong, not one part in a billion, less than one part in a trillion, and you’d have to measure it over the entire surface of the Earth to obtain the integrated, full spectrum power based on a full-surface signal at this precision.

Actually, it doesn’t work that way. If you were correct, then the net radiative balance that would have to be detected would be on the order of 1 part in 1 trillion or on the order of, say, 10^-9 W/m^2 (given that the emissions are on order of 10^3 W/m^2). However, the actual radiative imbalance is expected to be on the order of a W/m^2, or, in other words, somewhere between 0.1% and 1% of the total quantities we are measuring. Challenging? Yes…which is why we are not there yet and have to do it in a more indirect way by looking at changing ocean heat content, but not practically impossible as you have managed to convince yourself with your faulty argument.

So if Trenberth has actually tried to look at incoming versus outgoing radiation to detect radiative imbalance then he’s an idiot who cannot do elementary arithmetic, because he might as well be trying to detect solar tidal forces acting on a thumbtack using his bathroom scale.

Roger, with all due respect (and I say this because I truly do have a lot of respect for you and your scientific / technical abilities), when you come up with an argument that shows that other scientists are “idiot(s)”, you would be wise to entertain the possibility that it is you who have made an error rather than making bombastic statements that you might regret.

What would that be? A probable 1 to 1.5 C total warming upon a doubling of CO_2 all things being equal, where we acknowledge that we do not know the climate sensitivity and expect to measure it over the next fifty years of good, satellite supported and ARGO supported observations. So we assume no feedback at all, either sign until we have far more knowledge than we do at this time.

But, we do have more knowledge than just that we can get by direct measurements of total radiation in and out. For example, we have a good understanding of how the concentration of water vapor is expected to change as the temperature changes, predictions that are now confirmed by satellite measurements, and so the positive water vapor feedback is thus confirmed. We also have a reasonably good understanding of the ice-albedo feedback. Perhaps, on the basis of what we theoretically understand, one could justify a working hypothesis of 2 C per doubling by including all the feedbacks we understand well and then just assuming the net cloud feedback to be zero (despite the fact that our current understanding of how to incorporate what we know about clouds into climate models invariably seems to lead to a positive cloud feedback).

However, we also have more than that: We have various events that provide natural experiments of climate sensitivity, such as the glacial-interglacial cycles and the erruption of Mt Pinatubo. These “experiments” are imperfect and thus there are still some important uncertainties but it is very different from knowing nothing about what the climate sensitivity is.

And long before the end of the century, the human contribution to CO_2 levels in the atmosphere — levels that are highly debatable, as it is not at all clear that the Bern model is correct — will have substantially diminished, not because of “carbon futures” but because we will have worked out better ways of fueling civilization than burning chemically valuable and comparatively expensive hydrocarbons. LFTR, maybe fusion, solar photovoltaic, maybe something we cannot now imagine or anticipate.

What actually seems clear at the moment is that, with coal and unconventional sources of hydrocarbons being utilized at an ever more rapid rate, we have the potential to put a huge amount of CO2 into the atmosphere over the next century or so, probably toward the high end of the IPCC scenarios if not higher. If you believe that those other technologies that you mention will come along to stop this from occurring, then why not harness the forces of the marketplace to help that transition occur before we have imperiled ourselves? In other words, why not have them compete on a playing field where we do not give fossil fuels a “free pass” to significantly alter the chemistry of our atmosphere without paying any price whatsoever for doing so?

You took great offense and demanded an apology to my suggestion that if we tried to ask the authors directly what they meant by their statement, you would just brush off their response as altering their criterion in retrospect. So, I called your bluff by agreeing to apologize for my statement if you were to prove my expectations wrong by actually agreeing to actually abide by what the authors say if we ask them (and they say that they meant what I am confident that they meant)…and to stop misrepresenting what they said henceforth.

I agree. They put the parenthetical phrase right after what it modifies…That’s pretty unambiguous.

“However, if they wanted to say what you think they wanted to say, what they should do is write a sentence like this: “The simulations rule out trends that are statistically-indistinguishable from zero at the 95% confidence level for 15 years or more.””

No they wouldn’t, because that statement is still ambiguous. The 95% confidence level, in your example, could still apply to “the simulations…” or to “…trends that are statistically-indistinguishable from zero…”

Is English your first language because I can’t believe that you possibly believe this construction to be ambiguous, especially in comparison to the claim that the statement “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more,” shows the 95% confidence level applies completely unambiguously to “zero trends” and not “rule out”. That is patently ridiculous.

They ran the simulations. Near zero or negative trends occurred due to the internal climate variability in the models for periods of ten years. Such trends did not occur for periods of 15 years or over. Ever. Boom. Simple.

And…There you have just proven my point. They ran the model and they looked at the trends. There was no need (nor any good reason) to use any ill-defined techniques for determining the uncertainty in the trends. They simply looked at the trends that they got from the model and found the distribution of those trends.

The only problem with your statement is the “Ever”. They can’t run the model an infinite number of times (and, in fact, from their description, one can see that the number of 15 year segments that they actually have is very finite). Hence, how can they possibly claim, “This never happens”? It would be like claiming that a fair coin can never come up heads ten times in a row. What they can claim is, “This event happens so infrequently that it occurs less than 1 out of every 20 times.”

Incredible. No matter what I say though, you’re always somehow sure that I’ve proved your point or that you were always correct. I could have said they chased spider monkeys round a haunted mansion for five hours and then declared that there were no near-zero or negative trends of 15 years or more in the model runs – and you would still say I’ve proved your point. Because in your mind you’re always correct no matter what I say.

They quite clearly state the models internal variability allows for near zero or negative trends of up to ten years but above 15 years!? No way. I guess if you run the simulations 1000 times and it never gets above 10 years then its pretty safe to rule out such a thing happening for 15 or more! You have to draw the line eventually.

joeldshore;
For example, we have a good understanding of how the concentration of water vapor is expected to change as the temperature changes, predictions that are now confirmed by satellite measurements, and so the positive water vapor feedback is thus confirmed.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Like h*ll it is. The most recent literature shows water vapour is NOT increasing as expected. Even if it had, this alone doesn’t confirm positive water vapour feedback. The bulk of water vapour exists in a narrow band close to earth surface. The bulk of CO2 exists above that band. Any increase in water vapour must increase the direct effect of water vapour as a ghe acting upon upward LW from surface, but it must also diminish the ghe of everything in the atmospheric air column above it.

You can\t substantiate the change in water vapour, and to blithely assume that if the water vapour did change as expected then there is nothing but a direct affect on surface temps as a whole is silly.

But you’ve picked a fight with rgb so I”m heading for the store for more popcorn….

P.P.S: the 95% level applies to the zero trends *that are observed in real life…actual temperature data, NOT the trends the models show*. Hence the models rule out the possibility of you observing trends that are statistically indistinguishable from zero with 95% confidence *in real life* not in the simulations. In this way, the (at the 95% level) DOES directly modify the observed zero trends, and obviously IN RELATION TO the subject of ‘what the simulations rule out’ (meaning exactly that, totally ruled out 100%). How much clearer can I make this? It specifically modifies “zero trends” *in relation to*, i.e connecting it to, ‘what the simulations rule out’. The way they wrote it, where they put the bracketed phrase, is the ONLY place they could put it for this meaning to be clear. Try it anywhere else! It doesn’t work.

I am replying to the comedic laughter class which is your post at February 4, 2013 at 11:57 am that answers the three questions I posed to you as requested explanation of assertions you had made.

I asked you

1. What bluff have I made?

You have replied

You took great offense and demanded an apology to my suggestion that if we tried to ask the authors directly what they meant by their statement, you would just brush off their response as altering their criterion in retrospect. So, I called your bluff by agreeing to apologize for my statement if you were to prove my expectations wrong by actually agreeing to actually abide by what the authors say if we ask them (and they say that they meant what I am confident that they meant)…and to stop misrepresenting what they said henceforth.

So, you cannot back-up your lie that I made a “bluff”. I made no “bluff”.
The only “bluff” was your claim that NOAA would have supported your daft interpretation of the NOAA falsification criterion if you had asked NOAA, BUT YOU HAVE NOT ASKED NOAA.

Oh! So you are frightened to state your “points” openly in public. Well, I will copy them from your link. They are as I quote here and answer individually.

(1) The NOAA statement reads: “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more…” The authors chose to put the parenthetical expression after “rule out” rather than after “zero trends”. Why would they do this if they wanted it to modify “zero trends”? I could actually see the reverse happening, i.e., I could see them writing “The simulations rule out zero trends (at the 95% level)” when they really meant it to modify “rule out”…This would be a little sloppy, but certaintly reads more naturally than sticking the parenthetical expression in the middle. The fact that the authors explicitly avoided that more natural-sounding construction is clearly because they wanted to make it clear that the parenthetical expression modifies “rule out” and not “zero trends”.

I and Graham W have each answered this.

The only way the sentence could be written to mean what it says is to have written it as NOAA did. I explained this in detail in my post at February 3, 2013 at 3:35 pm. As I there explained, the “(at the 95% level)” applies to “zero trends” and cannot apply to anything else in the sentence.
Your only response to that explanation was your post at February 3, 2013 at 8:11 pm in which you claimed your own words were “sophistry”!

(2) If you adopt my interpretation, there is no real ambiguity in the statement. We know what is meant by “rule out” and we don’t have to worry about questions of how one determines the uncertainty in the trend estimate on the empirical data (i.e., what model one uses for the correlations known to exact in the data) because no such estimate is required. With your and Monckton’s interpretation, we don’t know what “ruled out” means (to what level of certainty?) and we don’t know what sort of model to use for the correlations in the empirical data in order to arrive at an uncertainty estimate for the trend.

Your misinterpretation of the sentence makes no sense. The sentence as it is written is clear and unambiguous. This has been explained to you repeatedly by Graham W and myself and in several ways. For example, read my response to your nonsense which I provide at February 3, 2013 at 3:35 pm.

(3) With my interpretation, there is a straightforward way to explain how they came to the conclusion that they did based on what they discuss regarding the simulations that they performed using the climate models: They looked at all the independent periods of a certain length in these multiple simulations and found that one had to make the length 15 years long in order that fewer than 5% of the simulations had trends less than zero. That is what it means to rule out at the 95% confidence level a zero trend. With your and Monckton’s interpretation, it is not clear what they did. How did they get from their simulations to their conclusion? You have never explained this because you can’t.

Your misinterpretation makes no sense. As I and others have repeatedly explained to you, the NOAA sentences make perfect sense. They say

Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

There is no reasonable way to misunderstand those sentences.
They say the model simulations often show near-zero or even negative trends for intervals of a decade or less. But the simulations don’t show – indeed, they “rule out” – (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 or more years. Hence, if reality provides such “absence of warming” with duration of 15 or more years then that would create a discrepancy between the model simulations and reality.

Again as example of this being explained to you, see my post at February 3, 2013 at 3:35 pm.

(4) As I noted previously, the SkepticalScience trend calculator (the only one that I know of that is available online) shows 15-year trends of temperature data to have an uncertainty of about 0.14 C per decade. That means that the “borderline” case of a trend that would not rule out a zero trend at 95% confidence is a trend of 0.14 C per decade, which would be compatible with the underlying trend lying anywhere between 0 and 0.28 C per decade with 95% confidence. Does it really make sense whatsoever that the models, which predict trends on average of about 0.20 C per decade would rule out an empirical trend whose 95% confidence interval goes from 0 and 0.28 C per decade? That is patently absurd!

What you think “absurd” is not relevant. NOAA said what they said. And what NOAA said makes sense. You cannot refute it by saying it is “absurd” while failing to explain any absurdity.

(5) Furthermore, the entire context of their discussion is that they are looking at ENSO-adjusted data, where the adjustment procedure is discussed in a paper that they reference. Such a procedure is necessary in order to increase the signal-to-noise ratio enough to even be able to come to the conclusion they have about 15 year trends. I

I have repeatedly explained to you (e.g. at February 3, 2013 at 3:23 am) that

But reality has had (at the 95% level) zero trends for more than 17 years whether or not one interpolates across or extrapolates back across the 1998 ENSO peak.

As I repeatedly told you on the other thread, there is no agreed method for adjusting for ENSO so the interpolation or extrapolation are each as good as any other ENSO correction method. And NOAA does NOT specify any particular adjustment method should be used: they merely cite one as an example that it can be done saying

ENSO-adjusted warming in the three surface temperature datasets over the last 2–25 yr continually lies within the 90% range of all similar-length ENSO-adjusted temperature changes in these simulations (Fig. 2.8b).

Fig, 2.8b is copied from a referenced paper but there is no suggestion that the ENSO adjustment method of that paper is required.

Furthermore, in the previous thread you asserted (for no reason) that only that method should be used, so I challenged you to show that the (at the 95% level) zero trend is less than 15 years when using that method. Your response has been the chirping of crickets.

I asked

3. What points have you made which I have failed to demonstrate are plain wrong?

You have replied

You have not demonstrated any of the points that I made in the comment that I linked to to be incorrect.

That is a lie. As I have here itemised (with cited posts) I have repeatedly refuted each of your points and you have failed to substantiate any of those points. Furthermore, you have not answered any of my rebuttals.

Joel, your clowning is to be commended, but it is not doing your scientific reputation any favours.

The whole post was good, but I have a question about terminology. What you call “quasi-equilibrium” I would call “quasi-steady state” or “approximate steady state”: in each volume element of the climate system, the energy in is approximately equal to the energy out during periods (possibly indeterminate) when there is no net imbalance in the whole system (maybe now?) Are equilibrium and steady-state generally used interchangeably?

Well, it isn’t in thermal equilibrium, but yet it we speak of temperature, and even average temperature, quite glibly. Temperature is an equilibrium concept, so when we use it we are assuming at least approximate/local equipartition of energy. As you say, the Earth is in a quasi-steady state, one that we are seeking to characterize by an overall “temperature” even though it bears damn-all resemblance to any of the conventional definitions of one. When we examine that steady state, it is none too steady, but it appears to be in at least some parts as a sort of series of punctuated equilibria, describable by the sort of Hurst-Kolmogorov statistics favored by Koutsoyiannis.

In turn I tend to think of these as strange attractors that represent the stable points of a complicated multidimensional limit cycle with a characteristic locally stable “equilibrium” temperature, where external drivers, random chance, deterministic evolution, and so on periodically cause the system to jump attractors. IMO Bob Tisdale’s SST data (which he often presents as decades of stability followed by a very short timescale jump one way or the other up or down a bit in temperature) is very strong evidence for this as being a pretty good description of what’s going on. So is e.g. the UAH LTT series, which is not precisely flat but appears to be flat “on average” before the 1997-1998 El Nino, then bobbles for a bit, then appears to be flat “on average” since then.

So when I say quasi-equilibrium, I mean the sort of local “equilibrium” we have been for the last 14 or 15 years — a fairly steady process of fluctuations up and down across an approximately steady state “global average” temperature. “Equilibrium” because we assign the Earth a temperature, which it never has and which means nothing terribly like temperature outside of the context of the definition. Quasi because the temperature it is completely bogus and because the system isn’t even in dynamical equilibrium, it is fluctuating around in a flat, wide phase space such that the state is never even approximately stationary. As far as I know there is no more precise terminology for this, but if there is I’m happy to learn it.

However, the actual radiative imbalance is expected to be on the order of a W/m^2, or, in other words, somewhere between 0.1% and 1% of the total quantities we are measuring. Challenging? Yes…which is why we are not there yet and have to do it in a more indirect way by looking at changing ocean heat content, but not practically impossible as you have managed to convince yourself with your faulty argument.

OK, clearly I am failing to communicate. I will try again. Let’s assume a “radiative imbalance” measured only at/above the TOA where we point an integrating spectrometer first up at Mr. Sun, then down at Mr. Earth, accepting all radiation in the half-space in the case of the Earth. You are alleging that there is a radiative imbalance on the order of 1 W/m^2, which I have to interpret as stating that 1 watt more is incident on each square meter of the Earth as incoming radiation than the Earth manages to reject as outgoing radiation in all frequencies, in a steady state.

That means that each square meter absorbs 86,400 extra joules per day. This is net profit — it takes in this much more energy than it gives off. That poor square meter takes in roughly extra joules per year. If the Earth absorbed one whole lousy watt per square meter across its entire surface, on average, more than it radiated away we would boil the oceans away just like Hansen fantasized after he imbibed those mushrooms not in some indefinite Venus-like future but within a year or two.

What you are talking about with your 1 W/m^2 is presumed changes in “forcing”, not anything whatsoever to do with TOA radiative imbalance. As first David Hoffer (sorry David, I missed it the first time) and I have pointed out, as you can read for yourself on any sort of real weather site (try John Nielsen-Gammon’s site, for example) we can do the following kind of clever trick.

Take UAH LTT. Pick a year/month when the anomaly was roughly 0.2 C — say somewhere in 1988. Take December of last year (when the UAH anomaly was 0.2 C IIRC). The average imbalance between incoming radiation and outgoing radiation across that entire 24 year period is zero. That is, if you integrated 100% of the Joules received by planet Earth over all 24 years, and 100% of all of the Joules lost (and included Joules received from e.g. nuclear and tidal heating as “received”) you’d get a great big whopping zero! Or something so close to zero that when you divided by the number of seconds in 24 years () you’d get millionths of nanowatts per square meter, or something like that.

This is the tricky thing about open systems — if ins and outs don’t almost precisely balance they heat up fast. Of course the Earth doesn’t actually heat up like because any imbalance is not particularly well sustained. All that happens is that the surface temperature goes up a little bit, which increases outgoing radiation until ins and outs balance, and everything is happy. But there is never any sort of sustained imbalance, and every single time the Earth returns to the same temperature the net gain across all of the interval in between is — zero.

Now, you can argue that it isn’t really zero because our measurements of average global temperature are a shit-lousy estimator for global Enthalpy, and if you did assert that I would loudly agree — but that argument cuts both ways, big time. Then we really do have to worry about things like what the ocean was doing, at depth throughout its bulk volume, because you can dump a truly stupendous amount of heat into the oceans without raising temperatures anywhere by much or the ocean can give up heat ditto.

And anyway, as soon as we do that we are doomed to wait for many decades more before we can quantitatively estimate anything, because even with ARGO the sampling of oceanic temperatures at depth is sparse, erratic, and entirely inadequate so far for the purposes of estimating its enthalpy content.

However, I suspect that the surface temperature and LTT (including satellite-based SSTs) are not that terrible estimators for — something. Not exactly bulk enthalpy, but some sort of measure relevant to climate. Which is why I asserted — and it seems that you agree — that the Earth itself is the only reasonable thermometer available at this time. So that when the LTT is equal — even transiently — to its value 24 years ago, it suggests that we’re barely outside of the noise as far as warming is concerned, and way, way short of being able to attribute warming quantitatively to specific drivers.

Richard: Let’s look critically at your responses to my points, one by one.

In response to my first point, you say:

The only way the sentence could be written to mean what it says is to have written it as NOAA did.

I agree, which is why they wrote it the way that they did, putting the parenthetical phrase immediately after what it modifies. However, since I think what you are trying to say is that this is the only way that this sentence could be written so that it would mean what you misinterpret it to mine, then you are incorrect. Putting the parenthetical phrase after “zero trends” would clearly be a superior way to say what you want it to say. Writing the sentence as “The simulations rule out trends that are statistically-indistinguishable from zero at the 95% confidence level for 15 years or more” would very clearly and unambiguously state what you like to believe it says.

You next say:

As I there explained, the “(at the 95% level)” applies to “zero trends” and cannot apply to anything else in the sentence.

So, how do you parse the following sentence: ““When the black line descends below the red horizontal line at 1.0 on the vertical axis, people sometimes say that the Higgs Boson has been ruled out at 95% confidence level at this mass”? ( http://blog.vixra.org/2011/12/13/the-higgs-boson-live-from-cern/ ) What does the phrase “at 95% confidence level” apply to?

In response to my second and third points, you don’t actually give a response. You don’t address them at all. You basically just continue harping on point (1), not saying anything substantive.

In response to my 4th point, you say:

What you think “absurd” is not relevant. NOAA said what they said. And what NOAA said makes sense. You cannot refute it by saying it is “absurd” while failing to explain any absurdity.

So, again, you don’t respond to my point. You just claim that they said what you think they said. And, I explained why it is absurd. Let me make it really simple for you: If I have a theory that when you measure something then you should get the value 2…and you measure it and get the value 1.0 +/- 1.5, do you think that this measurement has “ruled out” the possibility that my theory is correct?

As I repeatedly told you on the other thread, there is no agreed method for adjusting for ENSO so the interpolation or extrapolation are each as good as any other ENSO correction method. And NOAA does NOT specify any particular adjustment method should be used:

Scientific papers are not written by lawyers. If a paper explains that the simulation and empirical data has been adjusted using a specific method and bases its conclusions on the use of this method, then I can’t just choose some other method and claim to have satisfied the conditions that their assertion is based upon.

Otherwise, I will just choose the following method to adjust for ENSO: The start of the record has a really big El Nino and the end has a pretty big La Nina, so I will adjust the trend by adding 0.2 C per decade to correct for this? Why? Because that is my adjustment method and apparently any method is as good as any other. Then my trend will be greater than 0.2 C per decade and your whole argument falls apart, even with your misinterpretation of the criterion.

Of course, I would never make such a silly claim that I can use whatever method I want. You apparently will.

Furthermore, in the previous thread you asserted (for no reason) that only that method should be used, so I challenged you to show that the (at the 95% level) zero trend is less than 15 years when using that method. Your response has been the chirping of crickets.

If you look at the paper that they reference, their method is not so easy to implement if one does not yet have the code set up to do it. It is not my responsibility to do this work for you. You are the one who wants to apply this “falsification” criterion of NOAA’s. So, it is your responsibility to apply it correctly. It is not my responsibility to do it for you.

So, you cannot back-up your lie that I made a “bluff”. I made no “bluff”.

I explained the bluff and will simply repeat my explanation: You took great offense and demanded an apology to my suggestion that if we tried to ask the authors directly what they meant by their statement, you would just brush off their response as altering their criterion in retrospect. So, I called your bluff by agreeing to apologize for my statement if you were to prove my expectations wrong by actually agreeing to actually abide by what the authors say if we ask them (and they say that they meant what I am confident that they meant)…and to stop misrepresenting what they said henceforth.

This post is on the money. We are on the same wavelength (but I’m getting dejavu saying that because I think I said the same thing several years ago – post some more).

Take the energy flows/accumulations down several levels and insert a time dimension into it. Take it down to the per second basis. There is still phenomenally large energy flows (solar in and OLR out for example) but on a per second basis, these phenomenally large in and outs are almost perfectly balanced. Scary balanced in fact.

During the height of the noon-day Sun, up to 1,100 watts/m2/second can be coming in, but the energy is flowing back out at almost exactly the same rate – 1,099.993 W/m2/second.

Take the solar energy over 1 full year. 386.4 X 10^22 joules/m2. At most, the energy level leaving over that same year in 386.0 X 10^22 joules/m2. CO2 doubling produces +3.7 W/m2 per year some day. Ha, only 3.69999 W/m2 per year is just going to be emitted anyway within hours of CO2 absorbing it.

Its a mugs game – the real energy flows in the universe are completely different. Climate science is just a theory that works 18 levels simpler than it really should be at. It should be down at the photon/second, excited CO2 relaxation rate of 0.0000005 seconds rate, 8 billion atmospheric molecule collisions per second rate, how long does a speck of soil hold onto that absorbed photon of solar energy etc.

Even Joel Shore, a Phd physicist, would rather obfuscate than discuss what the real energy flows are doing. The theory is more important than finding out what is really going on. Not the way science advances.

. If you believe that those other technologies that you mention will come along to stop this from occurring, then why not harness the forces of the marketplace to help that transition occur before we have imperiled ourselves? In other words, why not have them compete on a playing field where we do not give fossil fuels a “free pass” to significantly alter the chemistry of ouryou atmosphere without paying any price whatsoever for doing so?

Because it will cost trillions of dollars to do so! Tens of trillions of dollars. Spent now, when we aren’t even certain that there will be a problem at all, let alone that it will be “catastrophic”. You are killing people — and I mean this quite seriously, so pay attention — you are killing people now on a bet that by doing so you’ll save more people later. You are killing every single human that remains impoverished because your silleconomic first world games intended to create a “level playing field” simply ensure that they can never, ever, afford electrical power in their (significantly shortened) lifetime.

We don’t have an infinite amount of money, and energy poverty is the most fundamental sort of poverty that there is. Every time you spend two dollars for energy where you’ve deliberately manipulated the markets and supply to ensure that it will cost two dollars where in a freer market it would only cost one, you impoverish every single living human who uses energy. You inflate currency in the wealthy west on the back of the poorest people in the world. You damn men, women and children to starvation, disease, and war. You condemn Europe to a blighted economy as they continue to spend a medium sized fortune on a chimera, taking measures that even the designers admit won’t make a hill of beans difference in CO_2 levels in fifty years. And where are the people advocating nuclear power — one of the few technologies out there we have today that give us energy without carbon? Where are the people pushing for the emergency development of thorium as a nuclear fuel?

Do not pretend that the cap and trade measure areall designed to “save the world”. They are designed to make rich people richer, by extracting more money from everybody else by pushing up the cost of energy and increasing margins even as one does so. If it were saving the world, you’d be shouting for nukes from the rooftops. It isn’t. If it were saving the world, one would have to begin by suggesting measures that might actually work, according to their designers. The measures designed so far don’t, and won’t even according to their designers. And don’t even think of pretending that we’re taking the hundreds of billions of dollars that we’ve artificially pulled out of people’s pockets and using them to develop alternative fuels, nuclear energy, more efficient storage mechanisms. You’re off my two orders of magnitude. That money goes straight where it always does, and always will until people wake up and use their common sense. Most of it goes straight into the pockets of the very energy companies that are supposed to be the problem. Quite a lot of it disappears into graft, corruption, and lines the pockets of people who are smart enough to game the system. A small share goes to bribe the politicians, to continue the media “heat” that interprets every weather disaster as being caused by AGW and steadfastly ignores any and all evidence to the contrary.

So I don’t support the measures that are currently being taken because I am not, in fact, an unkindly man. I lived in India for seven years growing up. I’ve visited many countries around the world and walked their dark and impoverished streets. I’ve seen first hand the human cost of the solution you propose, the cost we are paying right now, not a hypothetical cost that we mi,ght pay in a hypothetical future, if some of the most difficult computations ever done by humanity turn out to be correct the first time, even before we have sufficient data to inform them. I don’t know that I would support those measures if the proposals of the CAGW crowd were all true as opposed to just being possible (but somewhat improbable). The measures I would support, today or any other day, do not include implementing immature technologies that are not cost effective today but that might become cost effective in the future.

There are those that want to tax the hell out of people in NC to take measures now to prepare for some hypothetical 1 to 1.5 meter SLR that we are supposed to see by the year 2100. After all, this is a clear and present danger, right? There is no chance that this prediction could be wrong, is there? And besides, think of all the money that will be made along the way, all of the graft and corruption. Of course the actual measured rate of SLR, averaged over the last 140 years, is not even one ince a decade, and the current rate of SLR is a rate that might add ten whole more inches to the nine whole inches from the last 140 years — if it is sustained. It might not be. And if it ever is sustained, and starts to measurably increase to a threatening level, will measures to counter it cost less then than the do now? Of course not. We have to pay for the money to fix them now, taking the substantial risk that we’re throwing the money away if the religious prophecy of rising seas fails to come to pass.

Economics is all about trade-offs. Betting possible human lives in 2100 against certain human deaths now is a bad choice.

joeldshore;
So, I called your bluff by agreeing to apologize for my statement if you were to prove my expectations wrong by actually agreeing to actually abide by what the authors say if we ask them
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

So ask them. Not in a private email or phone call, but to respond right here in this thread. Not only so that we can see the response ourselves, and by whom, but so that we can discuss the matter as a whole with them. What value going around in circles with Richard? If you can get them to show up here, make a credible statement, and defend it against the inevitable questions that will be asked, by all means. If it turns out you are right, I’ll apologize to you, I’ll give odds that Richard will as well, and I’ll call him out if he doesn’t. But I’ll give even bigger odds that you can’t get them to do it. The fact is that the sentence reads as intended. Nobody parses it like you do. I think your are decent guy, but you are suffering from confirmation bias, plain and simple.

Similarly read what rgb wrote to you. He hit the nail on the head on the physics, and on the economics too. I’ve been to poor countries, I’ve seen the poverty. It always shocks me that some people seem to go from grade school to university to being a professor in a university. Go live on a farm, one in a winter climate, as a labourer, for a year. You’ll come back a better physicist, a better climatologist and a better economist.

That means that each square meter absorbs 86,400 extra joules per day. This is net profit — it takes in this much more energy than it gives off. That poor square meter takes in roughly \pi \times 10^7 extra joules per year. If the Earth absorbed one whole lousy watt per square meter across its entire surface, on average, more than it radiated away we would boil the oceans away just like Hansen fantasized after he imbibed those mushrooms not in some indefinite Venus-like future but within a year or two.

Let’s actually do the calculation: We’ll use the 1 W/m^2 (although a more accurate value is more like 0.5 W/m^2) and we’ll use an ocean mixed layer depth of 100 m (although the ocean heat content measurements typically go down to 700 m, and it has recently been argued that one has to look down to 2000 m to really see the full view of ocean heat content increase).

So, we have \pi \times 10^7 extra joules per year distributed in a volume of ocean that is 1 m^2 by 100 m, or 100 m^3. With a density of 1000 kg/m^3, its mass is thus m = 10^5 kg. The specific heat C is ~4200 J per (kg*C). So, we have energy = C*m*(Delta_T). Solving for Delta_T, we get 0.07 C. So, no, the oceans aren’t going to boil in a year. The temperature in the mixed layer only is going to rise by about 0.07 C in a year.

And, as I noted, the heat really apparently goes down several hundred meters and the imbalance is more like 0.5 W/m^2, so the actual ocean temperature rise is going to be lower.

davidmhoffer says:

Similarly read what rgb wrote to you. He hit the nail on the head on the physics,

Really? I respect rgb greatly, but the fact is that he made an intuitive estimate (“We would boil the oceans away…within a year or two”) that wasn’t even close to correct…And, it didn’t even take a calculation to know it wasn’t even close to being correct because I am not the first person to convert between ocean heat content and radiative imbalance. There are tons of freakin’ papers on it, for heaven’s sake!

Yet, rgb said something that was not even close to being correct and you guys just ate it up. Talk about confirmation bias!!

So earth is cooling. You can also see this if you look carefully at the graph at the beginning of this post. We are on a parabolic curve and we are heading down. So the real question I pose is: how much will we be cooling down?

Remember: the blue line in the curves are my actual observations. If it does not curve back upwards in 2016, for some or another reason, I honestly do not know where we will end up. You’d better all pray that my proposed “best fit” is indeed the best fit.

I am writing in hope of ‘cutting the Gordion knot by suggesting a different way forward. The suggestion consists of NOT asking you to argue, explain and/or refute but, instead, to ask you to say something.

Before making the suggestion, I explain why I am making it.

Your post addressed to me at February 4, 2013 at 5:48 pm begins by saying

Richard: Let’s look critically at your responses to my points, one by one.

I would welcome that, but you demonstrate you don’t know how to “look critically”.Looking critically does NOT consist of saying you are right so any refutation must be wrong.
It consists of seeing strengths and flaws of an argument or explanation and its supporting evidence.

Joel, it seems you have an extreme case of academic arrogance.
Most academics get it to some degree because it is induced by a form of Pavlovian conditioning. Academics pontificate to their students who always say “yes” or “no” in the right places for fear that otherwise their grades will suffer. And the careers of academics gain benefit by ‘going with the herd’ of academic opinion. Hence all academics are exposed to conditioning which encourages them to assume their ideas are correct: academics live within the ‘academic bubble’, they rarely obtain a serious critique of their assumptions, and their daily experience is unquestioning acceptance of their statements. Hence, they are conditioned to think a cogent argument consists of saying, “I am right”: it always works with their students, and others don’t question them.

The great academics are aware of the problem of conditioned academic arrogance and they overcome it by learning critical thinking skills while always bowing to the authority of empiricism. Please read the essays of Feynman if you want to discover how to overcome academic arrogance. And read the writings of Eric Grimsrud if you want to see the result of total submission to academic arrogance.

Your behaviour in this discussion demonstrates beyond any possibility of doubt that – at present – asking you to think critically is calling for a miracle. So, instead of yet again trying to get you to do it I will ask you a question.

Please answer this question and explain your answer to the question.In 2008 NOAA said

Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

According to your understanding of the quoted statement from NOAA, what would be “a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate”?

Take UAH LTT. Pick a year/month when the anomaly was roughly 0.2 C — say somewhere in 1988. Take December of last year (when the UAH anomaly was 0.2 C IIRC). The average imbalance between incoming radiation and outgoing radiation across that entire 24 year period is zero. That is, if you integrated 100% of the Joules received by planet Earth over all 24 years, and 100% of all of the Joules lost (and included Joules received from e.g. nuclear and tidal heating as “received”) you’d get a great big whopping zero! Or something so close to zero that when you divided by the number of seconds in 24 years (7.6 \times 10^8) you’d get millionths of nanowatts per square meter, or something like that.

…

Now, you can argue that it isn’t really zero because our measurements of average global temperature are a shit-lousy estimator for global Enthalpy, and if you did assert that I would loudly agree — but that argument cuts both ways, big time. Then we really do have to worry about things like what the ocean was doing, at depth throughout its bulk volume, because you can dump a truly stupendous amount of heat into the oceans without raising temperatures anywhere by much or the ocean can give up heat ditto.

Yes, indeed…Most of the heat is going into the oceans. That is well-known. Just the top few meters of ocean has the same total heat capacity [i.e., J/K, not J/(kg*K)] as the entire atmosphere. And, people have looked at the change in ocean heat content down to fairly significant depths. You seem to want to dismiss these measurements immediately without providing us with any evidence that they can’t be trusted even, say, to within a factor of 2 over, say, the last 30 years.

richardscourtney says:

Welcome to a very, very large club: many have tried and all have failed

You guys need to quit while you’re behind. The fact that rgb has said some demonstrably incorrect things and you guys just blindly endorse them does not look too good. It is one thing for someone to make the basic mistake like rgb has done in his statement of what an energy balance would translated into…but when nobody around here besides me seems to recognize these mistakes…and in fact blindly defends them…it really doesn’t say good things about your objectivity.

Let’s actually do the calculation: We’ll use the 1 W/m^2 (although a more accurate value is more like 0.5 W/m^2) and we’ll use an ocean mixed layer depth of 100 m (although the ocean heat content measurements typically go down to 700 m, and it has recently been argued that one has to look down to 2000 m to really see the full view of ocean heat content increase).

Ah, but this mixing presumes that there is time to equilibrate and mix. However, you are dumping 1 W/m^2 into each square meter of surface at the surface!. This means that it is absorbed approximately within the skin depth, which of course varies depending on the wavelength. IR, for example, is absorbed within the top millimeter or so. Visible light isn’t uniformly absorbed in the first 100 meters, it exponentially attenuates by frequency. Those papers you refer to very clearly show a diurnal cycle of heating not of the first 100 meters, but of the first meter to meter and a half by sunlit day, followed by cooling at night, so that sea surface temperature remain roughly stable. The temperature variation is significant — roughly 2.5 C — and almost entirely confined to the top meter with only a small tail stretching down to 10 meters or so.

Dumping an extra watt per meter into this layer will not cause it to magically skip the entire surface interaction that held the sea surface in equilibrium before and penetrate straight down to 100 meters, or 2000 meters, or wherever you would like to hide the heat. It will directly heat the surface water by some additional, quite small, amount. That water will then do what it already does — lose all of that heat back to the atmosphere from that top layer by means of radiation from the top surface itself, latent heat of evaporation, and direct surface conduction. Where in good time it will be radiated away to space. A tiny, tiny piece of it — perhaps 0.01 W/m^2 — will penetrate past 10 m, and yes, over geological time it will warm the oceans, although it is now of the same order as the geological heating at the ocean bottom from the Earth itself and it will be hard to tell.

You also neatly sidestepped the 1 W/m^2 surplus delivered to the land. I was indeed sloppy — it was a fermi estimate after all — and the sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day and so on (or rather I was assuming that the 1 W/m^2 was a diurnal average) but you are also asserting that this is the imbalance on forest land, farm land, city streets, lakes. I mean this is an atmospheric effect, right, measured at the top of the atmosphere so everything gets that extra watt, or half watt, all day or half a day or something.

Once again, the assertion that the Earth absorbs one more watt per square meter on average, every second of every day is utterly absurd. The effect of 1 W/m^2 extra forcing is simply to make the surface temperature increase a bit until the Earth is once again in dynamic equilibrium, losing as much heat every day as it gains. The variations in mean temperature occur across decadal time scales (if not centuries).

After all, insolation varies by far more than 1 W/m^2 over a very short timescale, every day. In the morning the sun hits obliquely. At noon it comes straight down. A cloud covers the sun. Yet every night, by four AM, the ground and air return to almost the same temperature they had the day before. The Earth is radiating heat away almost as fast as it absorbs it by day, slowly warming. It is radiating heat away faster than it absorbs it by night, slowly cooling.

And you are right, I was “excessive” in the assertion that the oceans would boil, although my reference there was poking fun at a statement by Hansen to that precise effect that I read a few years ago (it’s probably discussed on this list somewhere). I mean, this is the guy that is the lead man on the science of this issue? He’s a nut! And I mean that with all due respect for the many non-nut scientists in the world.

I also did not intend to call Trenberth an idiot — I doubt that he is. I also doubt that he would claim that the Earth is exhibiting a radiative imbalance of a watt per day. What he might claim is that the solar forcing has increased by a watt per day. Those two statements are not the same thing, and you should try to appreciate the difference.

Looking critically does NOT consist of saying you are right so any refutation must be wrong.

Sorry, but that statement just pegs my irony meter! I defy anybody to go back and read the five points that I wrote and then what you said in response and think that you have displayed any ability to think critically about your interpretation. Let’s just look at a few facts:

*You have insisted that “rule out” can only mean what you think it means and that to say something is ruled out at a 95% confidence level is an oxymoron. You have been presented with direct evidence that this statement is precisely what is used in talking about the search for new particles in high energy physics. Your response: You just refuse to even address this and simply continue to say the only way that the statement can be interpreted is your way.

*I have carefully considered the implications of your interpretation: Does your interpretation of what they said make sense in certain cases? When I have demonstrated how it does not make sense, your response has been to refuse to even address this and simply continue to say the only way that the statement can be interpreted is your way.

Joel, it seems you have an extreme case of academic arrogance.

Consider my irony meter pegged a second time! First, a point of fact: I have spent only the last 3 years in academia. Before that, I spent 13 years in industry, so your whole theory falls apart already.

However, the real irony is the inversion of the idea of arrogance that I see within the AGW skeptic community whereby the following behavior is not arrogant:
* Coming to climate science with very little scientific background (e.g., advanced study of a closely-related physical science).
* Reading very little by way of textbooks or papers in the field.
* Nonetheless believing that you know better than the experts in the field.

By contrast, the following behavior is arrogant:
* Coming to climate science from advanced study in a closely-related physical science.
* Nonetheless accepting the fact that you have a lot to learn and thus reading textbooks and papers in the field to try to get up to speed.
* Even having done this, still not making claims that you understand or know better than experts in the field but, rather, mainly using your knowledge to communicate and explain what these experts have concluded through their studies.

According to your understanding of the quoted statement from NOAA, what would be “a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate”?

(1) Take the data set they used (HadCRUT?) and follow the procedure that they reference to remove the effects of ENSO.

(2) Measure the observed empirical trend in the data over a 15 year or more period. (There is no need to compute the uncertainty in this trend estimate, which primarily represents not measurement uncertainty but simply the uncertainty in extracting the underlying trend from data that has trend + variability. What we are interested in here is the actual trend that was observed, not what it says about the underlying trend once variability is removed, which we can most easily ascertain by comparing the observed trend to the whole envelope of trends seen in the modeling runs.)

(3) If that empirically-observed trend after adjustment for ENSO is less than zero over 15 year or more period, then there is a discrepancy at a 95% confidence level. That is to say, you have observed something in the real world that happened less than 1 time in 20 in the model simulations and is thus unlikely to have occurred by chance if the real world is behaving as the models predict.

There are admittedly some subtleties in here: One is what led me to state that you should use the same data set that they did. If you are allowed to “shop around”, you are more likely to find a 1 in 20 outlier. After all, with 20 independent data sets, seeing a 1 in 20 outlier becomes much more likely than not! Different global temperature records are certainly not completely independent data sets; They are highly correlated. Still, this sort of “shopping around” would certainly increase your chance of seeing a 1 in 20 outlier to greater than 1 chance in 20. [A similar statement applies to “shopping around” by carefully choosing your exact starting and stopping point, although hopefully the data with ENSO removed would be less sensitive to such things.]

Seriously? I knew what he meant the first time around though the poor wording made me stop and go “huh?” for a moment. He’s since responded and clarified. Shall we list the “poorly worded” statements you made in this thread that were wrong to the point of being absurd and sent you back pedaling with “that’s not what I meant” statements or which you just ignored altogether rather than admit being wrong? (Please say “no”, that’s more time for copy and paste than I have today)

fwiw, I’ve asked rgb some pretty tough questions, one of which prompted a response from him along the lines of “I don’t know, but that’s a helluva good point”. I outright told him he was wrong in the way he was handling a disagreement with Monckton. You think we just fawn over every word rgb says? Simply not so Joel.

joeldshore;
However, the real irony is the inversion of the idea of arrogance that I see within the AGW skeptic community whereby the following behavior is not arrogant:
* Coming to climate science with very little scientific background (e.g., advanced study of a closely-related physical science).
* Reading very little by way of textbooks or papers in the field.
* Nonetheless believing that you know better than the experts in the field.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Seriously Joel, shove it. You’ve not only made a complete fool of yourself in this thread, you are now accusing the people you are arguing with in this thread, me, richardscourtney, and rgbatduke of having little scientific background andhaving done little reading in the field. You’ve demonstrated a poor grasp of the physics, made several rather obvious errors in regard to both the IPCC and current literature, and so end with an argument to authority. YOU haven’t got the science right, YOU aren’t up to speed on the official literature, YOU make one mistake after another, and so you end your argument with an Appeal to Authority.

I would just like to point out that you all are missing the point entirely.

To claim that an increase in the atmosphere caused by 0.01% in CO2 causes warming you must first come up with decent test methods (not calculations) that would prove that
a) the cooling effect of CO2 by re-radiation (back radiation to space = cooling) of incoming sunshine (5525K) @ 1.6 – 2.3 um and 4 – 5 um and and in the UV (between 0.21 and 0.19 um and between 0.18 and 0.135 um and between 0.125 and 0.12 um)
is smaller than
b) the warming effect of CO2 by re-radiation (back radiation to earth = warming) of outgoing earthshine (255K) @ between 14 and 16 um

CO2 also causes cooling by taking part in the life cycle. Plants and trees need warmth and CO2 to grow – which is why you don’t see trees at high latitudes and – altitudes. It appears no one has any figures on how much this cooling effect might be. There is clear evidence that there has been a big increase in greenery on earth in the past 4 decades.

From all of this, you should have figured out by now that any study implying that the net effect of more CO2 in the atmosphere is that of warming, must exhibit a balance sheet in the right dimensions showing us exactly how much radiative warming and how much radiative cooling is caused by an increase of 0.01% of CO2 that occurred in the past 50 years in the atmosphere. It must also tell us the amount of cooling caused by the increase in photosynthesis that has occurred during the past 50 years.

There are no such results in any study, let alone in the right dimensions.

So, all of your talks and chats and arguments have no value whatsoever and brings absolutely nothing new to the table.

Thankyou for attempting to answer my question to you which I presented at February 5, 2013 at 1:49 am. Unfortunately, I am disappointed that you have not answered it.

I am noting the fatuous twaddle which precedes your attempted reply to my question in your post: onlookers can assess that, and I would not wish to hinder their amusement at your expense. However, I observe that you say you worked in industry until three years ago. If your response to my question is any indication of how you answer direct questions then I can understand why you are no longer employed in industry.

Your attempt at an answer is in your post at February 5, 2013 at 6:29 am.
I stress that I am disappointed you have not answered my clear and simple question.
I remind that the question was

Please answer this question and explain your answer to the question.
In 2008 NOAA said

Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

According to your understanding of the quoted statement from NOAA, what would be “a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate”?

You have not said what you think would be “a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate”.
Instead,
(a) you have described a procedure which was not stated – or even hinted at – in the NOAA document,
(b) which has to use data which NOAA did not state (and you say you don’t know when you write “(HadCRUT?)” but which you say is critically important to avoid “an outlier”),
(c) and which has to use an ENSO adjustment method which NOAA did not specify but merely referenced as example.

The nearest you get to answering my question is when you say

(3) If that empirically-observed trend after adjustment for ENSO is less than zero over 15 year or more period, then there is a discrepancy at a 95% confidence level. That is to say, you have observed something in the real world that happened less than 1 time in 20 in the model simulations and is thus unlikely to have occurred by chance if the real world is behaving as the models predict.

I could debunk that ludicrous method which you have dreamed up, but that debunking would only incur another round of your long-winded, knit-picking evasions. So, I refrain from the temptation to argue with the method you have imagined. Your flight of fancy does not answer my question and is ridiculous (e.g. it determines “empirically-observed trend after adjustment for ENSO is less than zero” but has no specified confidence limits).

So, I refuse to be side-tracked into discussion of your imaginary method.
Instead, I ask you to provide a clear and succinct answer to the question; viz.According to your understanding of the quoted statement from NOAA, what would be “a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate”?

Joel says: Richard M: I presented evidence that what Annan stated in terms of climate sensitivity in early 2006 aligns extremely closely with what he is stating now. If you have evidence to the contrary, perhaps you can present it rather than just insisting that his views have obviously radically changed without providing any quantitative statement of what the shift in his belief has been.

I already provided the obvious evidence to the contrary but you are in serious denial of reality. One can only feel sorry for you. I suspect you are so immersed in your rationalizations that you will eventually end up with major problems. There was a time when I thought you had a somewhat open mind. Now, that is gone. You will scratch and claw at everything until you can imagine something that supports what you want to believe. You are the epitome of a person in denial. I’ve seen gamblers who behave exactly like you are doing. One rationalization after another. At least they have Gamblers Anonymous.

A tiny, tiny piece of it — perhaps 0.01 W/m^2 — will penetrate past 10 m, and yes, over geological time it will warm the oceans, although it is now of the same order as the geological heating at the ocean bottom from the Earth itself and it will be hard to tell.

…

I also did not intend to call Trenberth an idiot — I doubt that he is. I also doubt that he would claim that the Earth is exhibiting a radiative imbalance of a watt per day. What he might claim is that the solar forcing has increased by a watt per day. Those two statements are not the same thing, and you should try to appreciate the difference.

People are measuring this. And, yes, the heat content in the oceans is increasing consistent with an ongoing energy imbalance of about 0.5 W/m^2 (over the last decade or two, I believe…Somewhat lower rates if you look over the entire past ~60 years.). You give a detailed description of the processes by which the heat is absorbed, transferred, and re-radiated…but your net claim comes down to this: You are claiming that over long timescales (years to decades), the amount of the ocean participating in the warming process is such that the effective heat capacity of the Earth system is very small. This is simply not what is observed to be true.

You also neatly sidestepped the 1 W/m^2 surplus delivered to the land. I was indeed sloppy — it was a fermi estimate after all — and the sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day and so on (or rather I was assuming that the 1 W/m^2 was a diurnal average) but you are also asserting that this is the imbalance on forest land, farm land, city streets, lakes. I mean this is an atmospheric effect, right, measured at the top of the atmosphere so everything gets that extra watt, or half watt, all day or half a day or something.

No…What is being said is that the surplus averaged over the Earth is about 0.5 W/m^2. It does not mean that it is this value everywhere. There are massive transfers of heat going on in the system. The extra heat, at least 90% of it as I recall, ends up in the oceans and I think much of the rest is accounted for by melting ice. Very little of it is in the atmosphere and in the land surface. We can probably find more accurate breakdowns somewhere.

You’ve not only made a complete fool of yourself in this thread, you are now accusing the people you are arguing with in this thread, me, richardscourtney, and rgbatduke of having little scientific background andhaving done little reading in the field.

Not everything in my broad description about the inversion of the concept of arrogance by the skeptic community applies to every person, but the point is that you guys think you know better than scientists who have been working in the field for years to decades…and you continually demonstrate that there are basic things that you don’t know. And yet, I am the one who is arrogant?

David M Hoffer was being considerate in suggesting your behaviour displays arrogance. As your question suggests, there are alternative explanations of your behaviour, but they are all more negative than that you are “arrogant”; e,g. stupid or dishonest would also explain it.

joeldshore;Not everything in my broad description about the inversion of the concept of arrogance by the skeptic community applies to every person,

But that is precisely what you said, and of people you know full well go out of their way to correct bad science on both sides of the debate.

but the point is that you guys think you know better than scientists who have been working in the field for years to decades…

Bull. Aside from being another appeal to authority, that is bullsh!t. What I think is that I have questions about the science that the people working in the field don’t have credible answers for, and I think claims that are being made can’t be substantiated by those self same people which becomes readily apparent when they are asked the tough questions.

and you continually demonstrate that there are basic things that you don’t know. And yet, I am the one who is arrogant

What I continually demonstrate is that I do know the basics and that you have gigantic holes in your knowledge of the IPCC and related literature. Nor was it my intent to imply that you are arrogant. Foolish was what I was after.

“If that empirically-observed trend after adjustment for ENSO is less than zero over 15 year or more period, then there is a discrepancy at a 95% confidence level. That is to say, you have observed something in the real world that happened less than 1 time in 20 in the model simulations and is thus unlikely to have occurred by chance if the real world is behaving as the models predict.”

The only problem is, as before (in the other thread), Joel is excluding “near-zero-but-positive” trends. The NOAA clearly state that “near zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations…”

So, by “near zero and even negative trends” it’s clear they are talking about, as regards the simulations output, any and all trends ranging from slightly positive (i.e. near zero but positive) all the way through the mythical exactly zero trend, and into the negative trends. This is all in the sentence immediately preceding the one with the (at the 95% level) and all the unnecessary controversy there. This is the immediate context for that sentence.

Yet in Joel’s answer to what he would need to see in order for the present day warming trend to be at odds with the model projections (and in other words for the models to be wrong), the observed trend must be negative, “less than zero”. That’s all he will accept. The “near zero” context from the sentence immediately leading into the disputed one is immediately forgotten (conveniently) and ONLY NEGATIVE TRENDS WILL DO, in Joel’s version.

What is the explanation for that? Why does that “near zero and even negative trends” context disappear completely when it comes to the very next sentence? It must do in Joel’s mind, for in his interpretation of their overall statement (incorporating both sentences), somehow the result is that only an observed negative trend of 15 years or more will do to falsify the models output.

I should clarify that this was a mistake. I need to be clearer with my words. It’s not the only problem. It’s specifically the problem I wanted to address in that particular comment, but it’s not the only problem. I just feel if I don’t clarify this now Joel will suddenly declare I’ve proved him right again somehow.

[ . . . ] The fact that the climate sensitivity (basically the feedback response) is plummeting as the current no-warming trend extends and sets fairly strict probable upper bounds on it is further direct evidence for this, although it is not yet conclusive as we don’t have enough decades of good data upon which to base any sound scientific conclusion as to the probable future evolution of the climate beyond the physics-supported null hypothesis.

What would that [ ] be? A probable 1 to 1.5 C total warming upon a doubling of CO_2 all things being equal, where we acknowledge that we do not know the climate sensitivity and expect to measure it over the next fifty years of good, satellite supported and ARGO supported observations. So we assume no feedback at all, either sign until we have far more knowledge than we do at this time.

I quoted just part of it to set up a thought scenario that I would like your comment on.

My Thought Scenario: There is a possibility that there are no fundamental physics restrictions on the sensitivity to doubling CO2 from being zero for either direct effect or feedback or for the combination of both. Further, the scenario is meant to also apply to either the system condition of transient or approximate equilibrium or approximate steady-state. All of that is offered with the caveat that all conditions in the complex earth-atmospheric never are equal or remain constant on any timescale.

Given that Thought Scenario, I have a question for you:

rgbatduke, can my Thought Scenario have a possibility of plausibility wrt fundamental physics?

P.P.S: So, in order for them to have got anywhere near to what Joel thinks they said, they would actually have needed to write the following:

Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations (at the 95% level) rule out negative trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed cooling of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

Richard: My questions at the end of my main comment were rhetorical, I’m not expecting nor will I accept any response from Joel that doesn’t begin with an apology. Therefore he’ll be wasting his time trying to talk to me (he’ll never apologise), and in any case by his own way of looking at the world you are the only person he needs to converse with about this since you’re a scientist and therefore a valid human being. In Joel’s mind, my being a layperson renders me subhuman.

So rest assured that the only course Joel can take is to properly answer your question. If he does anything but that, all onlookers will see it as dishonesty and evasion and rightly so.

My comment to you (at February 5, 2013 at 10:19 am) hoped to achieve focus on getting Joel Shore to reveal his misunderstanding to himself by forcing him to answer my question. It was NOT intended to dissuade you from contributing to the discussion in any way.

Please be assured that in a scientific discussion the value of a comment is assessed on its merits and not on the basis of who or what person presented it. What Joel thinks of a person is his business and not relevant to anything. Remember, a Patents Clerk revolutionised physics and he was only later acknowledged to be a scientist.

You demolished Joel Shore on the other thread. You are as worthy to engage with him as anybody else, and if I implied otherwise then I apologise.

So, I refuse to be side-tracked into discussion of your imaginary method.
Instead, I ask you to provide a clear and succinct answer to the question; viz.
According to your understanding of the quoted statement from NOAA, what would be “a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate”?

There is no substitute for going through the process that I have outlined. If you don’t want to go through the process, that is fine. But, then don’t make the false claims that you have been making in regards to whether the criterion outlined for determining whether there is a discrepancy between the models and the temperature record has been satisfied. You have not done the calculations to reach a conclusion either way (and, on the basis of what we see in the record not adjusted for ENSO, I very highly doubt that the criterion for a discrepancy has been reached). And, of course, it is patently ridiculous to believe that “rule out” means that you can say something about a statistical issue with 100% confidence.

Graham says:

In Joel’s mind, my being a layperson renders me subhuman.

That is not what I said and absolutely not what I meant. Richard started this whole thing by launching into a whole tirade that I was suffering from “academic arrogance”, so I was just noting the bizarre world around these parts in regards to what is considered arrogant and what is not. You guys are awful sensitive…and at least some of you (you less than others) dish out quite a bit of abuse on me, but then get all upset when I even mildly turn it back on you.

And (especially after Richard’s last post to you), you might want to read (or re-read) “King Lear” for some insight into who your real friends are. They are not always the ones who tell you things that you want to hear. Frankly, I have too much respect for your intelligence and others reading this thread to ever engage in the sort of sophistric arguments that Richard has here.

davidmhoffer says:

You really should take a few days off and cool down.

I hardly think that I am the one losing my cool. But, I may follow your advice to some degree, not least of which, because some serious family matters have come up that may swamp my time and energy. I also think that little can be gained from further discussing the NOAA criterion thing. I think people can read it and decide for themselves who is bringing serious arguments to the table.

[rgb: I would still be interested in discussing the issues that you have raised, although again, work and family issues may make my response times slower.]

Richard, no need to apologise, I know you weren’t saying I couldn’t comment. You know I will anyway…! I was just trying to say that I still think Joel should have another go at answering your question and there’s little point him replying to me in what I was saying; they were just possible points of interest, maybe.

Of course I exaggerate (a lot) for – hopefully -comic effect when I say things like “Joel considers lay people subhuman”, naturally it’s nowhere near that extreme. There is just sometimes a little inkling of a suggestion that points of view aren’t necessarily registered or considered as much by Joel if they don’t come from a place of authority. But what do I know I only have these discussions to go on I don’t know Joel or anyone here personally so it’s hard to say.

Overall I’m just fascinated to see if any of the arguments on this thread can possibly be resolved or if we’re all just churning the same ideas through our heads over and over and getting nowhere. There must be some way to reach some kind of agreement on things!

At February 5, 2013 at 1:31 pm in response to my clear question which was

According to your understanding of the quoted statement from NOAA, what would be “a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate”?

You have replied

There is no substitute for going through the process that I have outlined. If you don’t want to go through the process, that is fine.

So, you say you cannot define the “discrepancy”, you can only relate a “process” which you have imagined out of whole cloth.

Joel, the NOAA criterion defines the discrepancy. Try to understand that if you cannot state the discrepancy then you do not understand the NOAA criterion.
You may be concealing your lack of understanding from yourself, but you are not hiding it from anybody else. Wake up to reality.

I will again quote NOAA’s definition, then paraphrase what the “discrepancy” is, then state what I understand your misinterpretation of the “discrepancy” to be.

ENSO-adjusted warming in the three surface temperature datasets over the last 2–25 yr continually lies within the 90% range of all similar-length ENSO-adjusted temperature changes in these simulations (Fig. 2.8b). Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

To any rational person, that says:
The climate model simulations (which do not show ENSO effects) often show trends near to zero for periods of 10 or less years, but the simulations do not permit there to be (i.e. “rule out”) such trends for 15 years and, therefore, a difference (i.e. a discrepancy) between the simulations of the models and reality would exist if reality were to provide (at 95% confidence) trends which cannot be discerned as being different from zero for 15 or more years when effects of ENSO are removed.
But, you assert that it says the “discrepancy” is something which cannot be defined except as a process which you have dreamed up.

“…numerous factors…combined with stubborn refusal of the planet to warm…”
Forget those factors. For a scientist, sixteen years with no warming ought to be enough to tell him that the experiment has failed, that the attempt to cause warming by putting carbon dioxide in the air just does not work. This is in accord with Miskolczi’s analysis of radiosonde measurements. He showed that atmospheric absorption of long-wave radiation was constant for 61 years while at the same time carbon dioxide increased by 21.6 percent. This substantial amount of carbon dioxide did not increase IR absorption by the atmosphere by one whit. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. This explains exactly why the planet refuses to warm And it settles the sensitivity issue too: without that imaginary greenhouse warming the true sensitivity for doubling of carbon dioxide is exactly zero.

People are measuring this. And, yes, the heat content in the oceans is increasing consistent with an ongoing energy imbalance of about 0.5 W/m^2 (over the last decade or two, I believe…Somewhat lower rates if you look over the entire past ~60 years.). You give a detailed description of the processes by which the heat is absorbed, transferred, and re-radiated…but your net claim comes down to this: You are claiming that over long timescales (years to decades), the amount of the ocean participating in the warming process is such that the effective heat capacity of the Earth system is very small. This is simply not what is observed to be true.

Actually, what I generally claim on this list is that the heat capacity of the land is generally small so its time scales are not terribly important on a decadal scale, with the exception of persistent changes in albedo due to anthropogenic or other causes. The heat capacity of the ocean is enormous, as it its capacity as a CO_2 source/sink, and it is rife with climate interactive timescales ranging from hours to centuries. It is a vast thermal buffer that moderates all of the climate “noise” at its surface, but it is also a highly stratified buffer where almost all of its volume is at 4K (damn cold, in other words) with only a thin skin of gradually warmer water and only a few meters of water that are at temperatures close the main air temperature above it. This top layer — the sea surface — is the only part that actually has temperature fluctuations in response to diurnal insolation and direct interaction with the air above it.

Now we don’t have to go too far to see how global SSTs have varied over the thirty three years of good observational data:

SSTs, like LTTs, appear to be flat until 1997-1998, jump discretely in response to the super El Nino, and then remain flat from then until the present. Across the entire range they increase by perhaps 0.2 to 0.3, a rate of 0.1 C per decade or 1 C per century. The actual pattern of temperature variation does not strongly support a correlation with CO_2 concentration — it supports a strong correlation with discrete global oscillation phenomena, specifically with El Nino rapidly making a significant global change in oceanic heat content when conditions are right. But you might argue that the direction and probability of this sort of shift may be functional on CO_2 concentration and I wouldn’t argue. However, CO_2 levels significantly increased across the 30 years plotted — much more than they did over the thirty years preceding this — and yet the temperature change is modest and localized.

The ocean is, of course, 70% of the Earth’s surface, so this does an excellent job of setting the baseline surface temperature trend for the entire planet. Its strong correspondence with lower troposphere temperatures suggests that this trend isn’t spurious, it is robust.

What I usually do now is point out that a lot of what happens to our current climate is determined by heat absorbed or not absorbed by the ocean ten, fifty, a hundred, five hundred years ago. The ocean is a vast non-Markovian “memory” of past climate with many loops on many time scales. This memory isn’t just of temperature — oceanic water has persistent historic chemistry that also circulates, so that upwelling water can all by itself liberate CO_2 and other greenhouse gases absorbed hundreds of years ago or produced by decay thousands of years ago (or longer) as it warms. We do not really know how to account for the effect of this on climate — we cannot, for example, predict the future time evolution of ENSO, and there is strong evidence to suggest that until we can, we can’t even pretend to predict the short term climate, let alone the long term climate.

But this time I think I’ll just point out that you have just acknowledged, if you look at your own words above, that the oceanic heat buffer will almost completely ameliorate AGW to the extent that it occurs. You’re arguing, after all, that the “missing heat” is all going into the deep ocean, the ocean underneath the surface later that is manifestly not warming, or at least is warming even slower than predicted by a CO_2-only no feedback analysis. You also argued above, persuasively, that you could dump the missing heat there for a century and warm it by an almost undetectable amount, because it has a really vast heat capacity (nicely explaining why we actually almost can’t detect it now) and even if you manage to warm the waters in the space between the thermocline and the deep ocean by a whole 0.1 degree uniformly, the deep ocean itself still has many times that volume at 4 K as a huge reservoir on the lower boundary.

Bear in mind that I don’t “deny” the GHE. I argue with people on list who do. My argument is that the climate models suck, and that we really can’t help the fact that they suck — yet — because we don’t understand the dynamics of the system well enough to build ones that don’t suck. This is just one of many places where that is true. The earth’s climate isn’t one giant Navier-Stokes problem for the atmosphere coupled to all sorts of radiative chemistry, solar and orbital dynamics, and physics. It is at least two giant coupled Navier-Stokess problems for the atmosphere and the ocean coupled to all of the external drivers, located on a rapidly spinning deformed not-quite-spherical ball with nontrivial surface structure that itself is moving. I could even add a third coupled Navier-Stokes problem to the list — the flow of liquid rock underneath the thin crust of “solid” surface that is responsible for a lot of the movement of the surface, a small part of the heat budget globally, and a lot of heat and interesting atmospheric chemistry in highly localized and moderately unpredictable places and times. Or a fourth, although I don’t know that magnetohydrodynamics in the sun can properly be reduced to “just” a Navier-Stokes equation.

Mathematicians cannot even prove that the plain old boring NS equation always has solutions, and the solutions we have discovered or numerically evaluated are marvelously complex, with all sorts of self-organized activity and multiple persistent timescales. They exhibit almost excruciating sensitivity to initial conditions (are chaotic) — tiny changes can result in entirely different structures evolving with entirely different future histories. They are equally sensitive to changes in the model assumptions, especially in or near critical regimes, and where they are chaotic everything is a critical regime.

By the end of the century we might have worked all this out. At the moment, we don’t know enough TO work it out. That is what this entire discussion is all about. The models used to generate the IPCC resort that is being discussed “robustly” predicted warming if CO_2 trends continued. They not only continued, they exceeded the predicted trends. However, nature perversely failed to observably warm over the entire 15 or so years from then until now. Those same models ruled this observed behavior out at a very high probability. Specifically, since many of them are basically running ensembles of initial conditions to get a phase space of possible outcomes, what the IPCC report is stating is that very, very few of their runs exhibited zero temperature trends longer than 10 years. Precisely what fraction this is is difficult to tell, as they don’t say, they only say that the rule out trends as long as 15 years at the 95% level. This really doesn’t mean much, but if I were to take it at face value it means that 95% of the runs that they extended out to 15 years exhibited signficant warming.

There are then multiple possibilities, since this report summarizes multiple models and runs by different groups. One group might have actually “gotten it right” and their model might have consistently exhibited zero trends a lot more often than only 5% of the time. Some groups may have gotten it very wrong, getting zero trends of 15 years 0% of the time. Presumably model runs with high sensitivity would have done the latter, ones with more modest sensitivity would have had a higher probability of the former.

Or, they may have all consistently failed at the same 5% rate. It is difficult to know without going back to the literature and/or talking to the indvidual modelers or looking at their outcome data (if it still exists — data management in this field has been terrible). One would assume that any group that actually DID succeed in beating 5% with their model would be crowing about it (assuming that everybody is honest and that there is no conspiracy to only publish the results of models that show extreme warming). One is also absolutely certain that any model that was successful in this regard has far less climate sensitivity than the extreme values that have been bandied about.

We can leave the rampant confirmation bias associated with shifting the climate sensitivity down just enough to keep the current zero trend from being too unbelievable while maintaining a strong warming prediction, instead of simply fitting the sensitivity to the zero trend climate data or the entire temperature trend over the last 30 years aside, because that is a self-healing problem as models are eventually self-consistently iterated to keep from being too unbelievable. Bayesian reasoning will heal all errors, given time. But if we simply view the zero trend actual data compared to the model hypothesis using ordinary hypothesis testing methodology, it is reasonable to believe that there are some problems with the model hypotheses.

That is, the specific meaning is that there is only a 5% — or at this point, more like 3% or 2% — chance of observing the data if the model hypotheses were all true. That doesn’t falsify the hypotheses — 1 in 20 chances happen 1 in 20 trials, on average, and any trial could be the one. 1 in 50 chances happen too. Trust me on this — I’m a bloody expert on hypothesis testing. To quote a far greater light, George Marsaglia, “p happens”.

However, it sure as hell isn’t strong evidence for the hypotheses!

If I were the author of one of the models that produced zero trends only 0.5% of the time, I’d pretty much be going back to the drawing board. If I were the author of a model that got something that resembled the actual data only 5% of the time, I’d be very worried indeed — almost certain that something is wrong and looking for what it could be.

This uncertainty is clearly reflected in the current AR process. Papers are appearing that put increasingly small upper bounds on climate sensitivity, and median claims are coming down as well, as they are fairly positively ruled out by the data. New measurements suggest that soot is more important than believed, so that CO_2 is suddenly less important because soot was not correctly treated in the models (so neither was CO_2). These are all highly nonlinear models, and tweaking these things really means “back to the drawing board” to try again from scratch. We have new data on atmospheric chemistry. The stratosphere has done unexpected things in association — possibly — with the current weak solar cycle.

Even the search for the “missing heat” is in a sense bogus, because you are once again following your hypothesis in the search, not being led by the data. Your science is precisely backwards, in other words. You are certain their is missing heat because you believe your hypothesis more than the data, so you set out to find it. This is one of the most dangerous processes one can engage in in statistics and science because you almost always can find something if you look for it hard enough in a noisy system.

You also have to worry about the quality and quantity of data, especially where the oceans are concerned. ARGO is great, but it is woefully inadequate and will be for decades yet. Even with its inadequate coverage, one has only years of data — not enough to even establish a baseline (if a “baseline” exists for this dynamic planet).

If you can digest all of the above — including the part where if the missing heat is going into the deeper ocean that is good, because then we can pretty much forget about it for the next century — then we can talk about how likely it is that the ocean is warming between more or less fixed boundary conditions at the bottom and the surface, given the SST data referenced above. I don’t say it cannot be so, but it is, you will have to admit, not what one expects. Rather, one expects to see deeper warming only as part of a smooth gradient down from the surface, on average, so deeper warming should reflect SSTs with a suitable series of lags. This makes looking there for the extra heat a bit odd and unlikely, don’t you think? Wouldn’t you look on the surface first?

We do know that all the Climate-treat talk is nonsense! First of all I take it that you haven’t studied Oceanography nor Geology within any of your subjects? If you had, you would have known a bit more about the real factor which all your named sea talks is the seamounts, more than 30.000 many of which are active or earlier active submarine vulcanos. It’s estmated that 500 of them are more or less constantly active. They are responsible for more than 90% of all magma that comes out in air, over land or in water around the world and also most CO2. Not only that, their activity is due to tectonical plates movements, which I guess you and other understand is more due to ‘Mother Nature’ than us humans.

If you want to see for yourself all the activity due to tectonical plates’ movement please look at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
There you have the main factor apart from the real Environmental Human caused problem Clean Water. Or rather the lack of Clean Water due to all chemical and medical (including hormone) vasts that goes from us humans all the way out to the Oceans.

As for waterlevels. Please look at two of the maps from my D-essay 1995Ostergotland Bronze Age, Norah4you file February 6th 2013 and compare that map’s waterlevels (black dots=settlement of any kind) with Forts up to 1000 AD along seaways towards Roxen, Norah4you file February 6th 2013
That’s the waterlevels I had to write a program going thru more than 40 main factors to establish the Sealevels in Ocean from Stone Age up to 1000 AD Landrise around the world due to last Ice Age Icemelting. If I hadn’t done that, as well as compared my results with geological and archaeological estimation (almost identical with the former, the later had forgotten landrise) I would have had correct waterlevels in the Baltic Sea which I needed in order to do the wor needed for my D-level essay (D-level is needed for a Magister Exam.)
What you see on maps is the two periods the last 4000 years when the Northern Hemisphere at least was 1-3 degress WARMER then today… Both not exact identical but alike. Changes there along the coast re. waterlevels are mainly due to melting icewater which caused landrise. All according to what Archimedes told so long ago.

is still trying to put forward the flawed argument that there was a “halt in global warming”, because there was a lack of statistical significance for a given x% probability level (i.e., because of the failure to reject the Null-hypothesis of a Zero-trend at this x%-probability level) over a y number of years. However, his reasoning has still no scientific validity. A failure to reject a statistical Null-hypothesis (Zero-trend in this case) does not falsify the alternative hypothesis (presence of a global warming trend in the temperature record), because it can’t be logically excluded the possibility that the non-detection of the trend is only due to a too small data sample, in which the trend is only masked by the fluctuations within the sample.

A failure to reject a statistical Null-hypothesis (Zero-trend in this case) does not falsify the alternative hypothesis (presence of a global warming trend in the temperature record), because it can’t be logically excluded the possibility that the non-detection of the trend is only due to a too small data sample, in which the trend is only masked by the fluctuations within the sample.

Read my comment immediately above, as it presents a statistically precise analysis of the situation. It doesn’t falsify the alternative hypothesis, as you note, but it should damn well make the authors of models that predict it worried about the accuracy of their models. Also, it does not support the alternative hypothesis. If one follows Cox/Jaynes scientific reasoning, one doesn’t verify or falsify, one shifts degree of belief continuously. The past 16 years should — I say should — be causing people to decrease belief in the alternative hypothesis and increase belief in the null hypothesis, or at the very least be thinking about modified alternative hypotheses.

Read my comment immediately above, as it presents a statistically precise analysis of the situation. It doesn’t falsify the alternative hypothesis, as you note, but it should damn well make the authors of models that predict it worried about the accuracy of their models.

I don’t see any statistically precise analysis of the situation by you in your comment. I see you are asserting the models had “ruled out” with high probability a temperature record how it has been observed in Nature over the recent 15 years or so, which I consider a misrepresentation of what has been published. Or you would have to show where this has been said and provide the exact reference where you are getting this from. You said IPCC Report. Doubtful, that the statement comes from there. Perhaps you mean the NOAA Report, which has been cited by others here. The wording of your claim has some resemblance to what can be read there. Only, the statement in the NOAA report is not about the observed temperature record as is, but about a comparison between model simulations and observed temperature record after adjusting for the contributions to the temperature variability coming from ENSO variability. A requirement for being precise is to not distort something that is being said in scientific publications to make it best fit for one’s own narrative. And to be more precise, the statement in the NOAA report is valid about the model used for the analysis in the paper, which is referenced there, not for all models.

Also, it does not support the alternative hypothesis.

That is correct. The limited data do not allow any conclusions with respect to the validity of either hypothesis. But we don’t have only these limited data. We have more data available. Not just temperature data over a longer record, also other variables. For instance, ice melt has been accelerating both in the Arctic and in the Antarctic over the recent two decades. Also, the global ocean heat content anomaly has been increasing up to a depth of at least 2000 m, which, by the way, dwarfs the atmosphere regarding the amount of energy that has been accumulated there. One can suspect, it is the surface/troposphere temperature record over recent years that has been the statistical outlier within the bigger picture.

The past 16 years should — I say should — be causing people to decrease belief in the alternative hypothesis and increase belief in the null hypothesis, or at the very least be thinking about modified alternative hypotheses.

That might be warranted, if there was something different about the past 16 years that is not consistent with the current understanding of the climate dynamics. However, I have not seen any solid empirical, statistical evidence yet that there was. Only assertions and conjecture. There are plenty of latter, particularly coming from the “skeptics” as one can study in this blog.

“That might be warranted, if there was something different about the past 16 years that is not consistent with the current understanding of the climate dynamics. However, I have not seen any solid empirical, statistical evidence yet that there was. Only assertions and conjecture.”

Pure projection. The assertions and conjectures are emitted entirely from the keyboards of climate alarmists like Perlwitz. He has the onus of showing that the CO2=CAGW conjecture is valid, and he has completely failed. That is confirmed by the ultimate Authority: Planet Earth.

Who should we believe, a self serving rent-seeker like Perlwitz? Or the planet — and our lying eyes?

No. As anybody can see who reads that link, the reality is that Joel Shore had made an assertion and I asked him to justify it by asking him (with supported data) about the recent period of “no discernible warming”.

At February 2, 2013 at 6:19 pm Shore evaded the question and I pressed the matter at February 3, 2013 at 3:23 am. This forced Shore to admit (at February 3, 2013 at 10:48 am) that his assertion was a falsehood because he could not possibly know what he asserted.

At February 3, 2013 at 1:00 pm I pointed out that Shore had lied. He dropped the matter and did not mention it again.
And you say that is my claiming there is “a halt to global warming”.
Even by your standards, that is egregious misrepresentation.

However, it is a simple matter of fact that there has been a cessation of discernible (at 95% confidence) global warming for at least the most recent 17 years (GISS) and possibly 23 years (RSS). This does not mean global warming is known to have stopped but it does mean two important facts; i.e.
1.
If global warming is happening then it is at too small a rate to be discernible over the most recent 17 years despite increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration although it was happening previously at a discernible rate over similar period.
2.
A cessation of discernible global warming over such a period falsifies the climate models according to the falsification criterion stated by NOAA in 2008.

And to be more precise, the statement in the NOAA report is valid about the model used for the analysis in the paper, which is referenced there, not for all models.

In absolute terms that can only be correct because some models may not yet have been constructed.

However, the model falsification criterion was in NOAA’s report titled ‘The State of The Climate’. Clearly, at the time the report was published in 2008 NOAA considered the criterion to apply to all existing climate models on the basis of the simulations it had assessed from its sample of the existing models.

Your words I quote here misrepresent reality. This is not surprising because misrepresentation of reality is your usual practice when reality does not concur with what you want to believe.

Unfortunately all back radiation needs to be taken into account because all inputs and greenhouse gases contribute like a team in the LW radiation. If greenhouse gases weren’t amplified by inputs, the back radiation value would be 157 w/m2, not 333 w/m2. Therefore a percentage increase needs to be implemented to the overall back ground. There are up to 20 percent errors here in basic values so knowing how the finer details interact with amplified inputs are not known. At this moment in time don’t know how to improve the calculation without knowing the unknowns and this problem is what the SB can’t calculate.

“At February 3, 2013 at 1:00 pm I pointed out that Shore had lied. He dropped the matter and did not mention it again. And you say that is my claiming there is “a halt to global warming””.
Even by your standards, that is egregious misrepresentation.

Your conversation with Joel and your assertions about him are not my concern, right now.

As for your second sentence. So, are you saying following statement about a “recent halt in global warming” was not made by you?

I have to inform you then that someone else must have been posting many comments here under your name, making statements about which you claim now to not have made. Perhaps, you should contact Anthony Watts and ask him to get to the bottom of this.

As for the “recovery from LIA”, as the alleged cause for global warming as asserted by you (and many other “skeptics”). This is nothing more than an empty slogan without any physics in it. One could equally claim global warming must be attributed to the magic doing of pretty fairies.

However, it is a simple matter of fact that there has been a cessation of discernible (at 95% confidence) global warming for at least the most recent 17 years (GISS) and possibly 23 years (RSS).

The use of the word “cessation” implies that it supposedly had been present before, and now it was not anymore. If this is just a statement about that a trend can’t be detected at this significance level for the mentioned number of years, then it is technically correct, and tautological with the statement about a lack of statistical significance at this significance level. It still does not allow any conclusion about absence or presence of a global warming trend in the data, nor does is allow any conclusion about the actual physical process behind it. And even if it was true that a statistically significant trend could be found over a same time period or a shorter one before the recent period, one can’t even conclude that the trend was different. Before one could do this, one would have to establish statistically, that the change is not just random due to fluctuations in the data. A decrease in statistical significance could even occur without a change in the trend slope. It could occur merely by an increase in the magnitude of the variability in the recent time period compared to a previous one, even if the value for the trend staid exactly the same.

This does not mean global warming is known to have stopped but it does mean two important facts; i.e.

Thus, does this mean someone else had written previous comments under your name, saying something else, or have you changed your argument now? Latter would be nothing to be held against you.

1.
If global warming is happening then it is at too small a rate to be discernible over the most recent 17 years despite increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration although it was happening previously at a discernible rate over similar period.

Let’s do some fact checking about the “discernible rate” over a previous period of similar length.

None of those trends over that 17-year period is statistically significant at the 95% probability level. Among those data sets, RSS and UAH took about whole 22 and 24 years, respectively, before the 95% significance level was exceeded. GISS, NOAA, and HadCRUT4 took 19, 18, and 18 years, respectively.

So, what again is supposed to be different about the recent years compared to before?

A cessation of discernible global warming over such a period falsifies the climate models according to the falsification criterion stated by NOAA in 2008.

You obviously are referring to the State of the Climate Report 2008. There is no falsification criterion for climate models in there. The authors are trying to answer the question, “Do global temperature trends over the last decade falsify climate predictions?” (page S22f). Falsification of predictions is not the same as falsification of models. Assuming a conclusion is drawn from a comparison between simulations and observations that predictions made with a model have been falsified, such a conclusion is not sufficient to draw the conclusion that the model itself with which the predictions have been made has been falsified. Such a conclusion would be invalid, because lack of model skill is not the only possible cause for a failed prediction. The model could be the cause, indeed. For instance, the model’s climate sensitivity could be wrong. A discrepancy between simulations and observations could also arise on a shorter or medium time scale from a failure of the model to simulate features of unforced natural climate variability, even if the model’s climate sensitivity was correct and the model was able to correctly predict the average long-term climate trend.

However, another source of a discrepancy between model simulations and observations could be a divergence between the external drivers of climate in the real world and the external drivers prescribed for the model predictions. These drivers are not model features. Thus, a failure here would not falsify the model itself. It would falsify only the predictions. Actually, the likelihood of failure in such a case should be higher for a model with high predictive skills than for one with low skills, since the likelihood for compensating error should be lower for former model than for latter model. A highly skilled model will respond more accurately to the prescribed scenarios for the external drivers. If the prescribed scenarios are wrong the predictions done by such a model will accordingly diverge from the real world observations.

However, the model falsification criterion was in NOAA’s report titled ‘The State of The Climate’. Clearly, at the time the report was published in 2008 NOAA considered the criterion to apply to all existing climate models on the basis of the simulations it had assessed from its sample of the existing models.

Despite it is not a fact that the report formulated a falsification criterion for models, it did phrase one only for ENSO-adjusted predictions with ENSO-adjusted observations as comparison, your assertion here that the statements in the report were based on simulations with a “sample of the existing models” is not a fact either. It is clearly stated in the report that the simulations were done with only a single model, HadCM3, although with varying physical parameters:

“We can place this apparent lack of warming in the context of natural climate fluctuations other than ENSO using twenty-first century simulations with the HadCM3 climate model (Gordon et al. 2000), which is typical of those used in the recent IPCC report (AR4; Solomon et al. 2007). Ensembles with different modifications to the physical parameters of the model (within known uncertainties) (Collins et al. 2006) are performed for several of the IPCC SRES emissions scenarios (Solomon et al. 2007). Ten of these simulations have a steady long-term rate of warming between 0.15° and 0.25ºC decade–1, close to the expected rate of 0.2ºC decade–1. ENSO-adjusted warming in the three surface temperature datasets over the last 2–25 yr continually lies within the 90% range of all similar-length ENSO-adjusted temperature changes in these simulations (Fig. 2.8b). Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
(http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf, p. 23, Figure 2.8b on page 22 illustrates this graphically).

It is stated in the report that this model was “typical”. But “typical” does not mean that all the models give exactly the same answer. Otherwise, we didn’t need more than only one model anymore, if all said the same.

The repeated misrepresentation of statements from the report is on your side.

That link was to my dispute with Joel Shore about a falsehood which he had posted.

My reply at February 8, 2013 at 11:44 am itemised that dispute and explained how you had presented a falsehood.Your response is to say the issue which you raised “is not [your] concern, right now”.
Well, of course it is not “not [your] concern” any more because you always change the subject when you cannot see a way to avoid the fact that you were shown to be plain wrong.

Then you pretend of my statements concerning the NOAA falsification criterion

The repeated misrepresentation of statements from the report is on your side.

NO! I quote the report verbatim. You and Shore try to misrepresent those clear and unambiguous words.

Indeed, you are very revealing when you write

So, what again is supposed to be different about the recent years compared to before?

A cessation of discernible global warming over such a period falsifies the climate models according to the falsification criterion stated by NOAA in 2008.

You obviously are referring to the State of the Climate Report 2008

Yes, very “obviously” indeed. I quoted it, I cited it, I referenced it, and I linked to it repeatedly in this thread, and I have provided the pertinent page number (also repeatedly). But you don’t say I did any of that; instead, you imply there could be some doubt what I was talking about.

Indeed, you make the ludicrous suggestion

You obviously are referring to the State of the Climate Report 2008. There is no falsification criterion for climate models in there.

Bollocks!Much of this thread has been discussion of the criterion which you are now trying to claim does not exist!

I and others refuted the misrepresentations from Joel Shore of that clear and unambiguous criterion. Now you expect me to flatter your ego by bothering to refute your similar attempts to misrepresent that criterion. Indeed, you want me to discuss its existence! Well, I won’t because you and your opinions are not worth the bother.

Your long-winded weasel words cannot hide the truth. I am content to allow onlookers to read the thread and to judge the matter themselves.

NO! I quote the report verbatim. You and Shore try to misrepresent those clear and unambiguous words.

This is a clear falsehood, since Mr. Courtney has never quoted any passage of the NOAA report where anything is said about “falsification” of models. He can’t quote any statement, because there is nothing in the report, which says anything about a falsification criterion for models. Mr. Courtney has this made up, freely invented, whatever you call it. Instead, he has cited some other statement (a more comprehensive verbatim) version of this quote cited by him can also be found in my previous comment) that formulates a criterion, when one could speak about a discrepancy between simulations done with a model, specifically HadCM3, and observations. In my previous comment, I explained why this is not the same as what Mr. Courtney claims. He is obviously not able to give a substantiated reply to my explanation.

Clearly, you can’t stop yourself. When given the opportunity to admit the truth or lie and smear you always choose to lie and smear. For example, your post at February 9, 2013 at 7:39 am says of me

Just one examples for his lies. Mr. Courtney claims:

NO! I quote the report verbatim. You and Shore try to misrepresent those clear and unambiguous words.

This is a clear falsehood, since Mr. Courtney has never quoted any passage of the NOAA report where anything is said about “falsification” of models.

That is three lies by Perlw1tz in that short excerpt alone.

The first mention of the NOAA falsification criterion in this thread was by Joel Shore at February 2, 2013 at 6:19 pm. He did not reference it, link to it or quote from it. Like you, he misrepresented it.

ENSO-adjusted warming in the three surface temperature datasets over the last 2–25 yr continually lies within the 90% range of all similar-length ENSO-adjusted temperature changes in these simulations (Fig. 2.8b). Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

So, the climate models show “Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations”.
But, the climate models RULE OUT “(at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more”.

But reality has had (at the 95% level) zero trends for more than 17 years whether or not one interpolates across or extrapolates back across the 1998 ENSO peak.

In that thread you wriggled in every possible way – and some impossible ways – in attempt to claim the NOAA falsification criterion means other it says and I quote here (people wanting a laugh at your expense may want to read that thread).

The facts are clear.
According to the falsification criterion set by NOAA in 2008, the climate models are falsified by the recent period of 16+ years of (at 95% confidence) zero global temperature trend. This is because NOAA says the climate models simulations often show periods of 10 years when global temperature trends are zero or negative but the simulations rule out near zero trends in global temperature for periods of 15 years. What the models “rule out” nature has done.

The climate models are falsified: this contradicts your superstitious belief in AGW, and you need to come to terms with it.

The remainder of your post is similar and is equally easily refuted. Your assertion that I failed to refute your twaddle on the other thread is risible.
So, stop bothering me. You are an egregious nuisance and responding to your whining wastes my time.

Perlwitz cannot honestly believe that global temperatures are accelerating. He is a self-serving rent seeker feeding at the public trough, for sale to whoever is paying him. He posts what he is paid to post throughout the work day, as his comment time stamps prove.

To him/her/it/whatever the latest physical-reality-denier machine/robot/cyborg is that’s peddling the latest hateful nonsense…so periods from 1980 – blah de blah also show no statistically significant warming. Hilarious! Now who’s cherry picking!? It’s amusing that when “HOLOCAUST [oh sorry shouldn’t have said that bit] DENIERS” look at trends from the present back x number of years to look at the length of time there’s been no statistically significant warming it’s immediately OUTRAGEOUS and DISGRACEFUL “cherry-picking” but when a “warmonger” wants to find a trend to support their unbelievably convoluted and preposterous argument they can go back AT ANY POINT in the past arbitrarily picking out trends and there’s NO accusations of cherry-picking allowed…even though for the most part, trends of 16 years or more throughout periods beginning 1970 onwards ARE statistically significant UNTIL you get to the more recent times which DOES SUGGEST that the warming rate has decreased. But that’s no doubt just CHERRY PICKING on my part, not because it actually is, but because I’m an evil oil baron that shoots children for fun and profit.